The sentences register as grammatical and well-formed for me. I can easily
imagine myself saying something like, "I was baked a cake for my birthday!"
Using the construction like that, I can leave the agent (the baker) a
mystery. While this could also be accomplished with, "A cake was baked for
me for my birthday," I think I'd be much more likely to use the first
construction.

In terms of teaching, I prefer to keep labels (love them or hate them)
grounded more in morphosyntax rather than semantics. Subjects, for example,
can have so many semantic relationships with the predicate that just
defining it as the "doer" (or semantic agent) is very limiting and
troublesome. The semantic description often used for "subject" just doesn't
work in Scott's example! One of the reasons I love structural criteria for
sentence functions is for cases just like this.

What is the subject of "I was baked a cake"?

Convert the sentence to a yes or no question and whatever comes in second
position is the subject:

"Was I baked a cake?"

If I change the number of the suspected subject in the original sentence,
will it affect the verb?

"We were baked a cake."

Yep. So, this is how I'd tackle this with my students. We'd see that,
structurally, "I" is functioning as the subject of the sentence.
Semantically, "I" is the recipient, a role usually seen in the indirect
object, and Scott's way of thinking of it as a "retained indirect object" is
a nice way to discuss that relationship. While my approach to grammar is not
a generative approach, it is in these kinds of situations that I can value
generative contributions! Sentences certainly have patterns, and when we
play around with these patterns we sometimes get some strange things!




On Thu, Mar 5, 2009 at 12:16 PM, STAHLKE, HERBERT F <[log in to unmask]>wrote:

> One of the ongoing areas of uncertainty in English grammar, one that has
> been particularly clear in early transformational-generative discussions, is
> the extent to which indirect objects of active voice sentences can become
> subjects of corresponding passive voice sentences.  The consensus among TG
> grammarians back in the late sixties and early seventies was that some
> speakers allow them and some don't.  I find both of Scott's sentences
> well-formed, but I suspect other, very well informed grammarians on the list
> will not.
>
> Herb
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:
> [log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Scott
> Sent: 2009-03-05 12:13
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Future perfect and another passive +object; was ATEG Digest -
> 3 Mar 2009 to 4 Mar 2009 (#2009-50)
>
> "We will have finished the project tomorrow."
> At a time in the future and action will have been completed.
> Where's the beef?  My ESOL students had no problem with future
> perfects--then again, all were college graduates.  My non-college graduate
> ESOL students spoke a fluent but very basic English and I concentrated on
> their obvious errors in writing.  I once remarked that they were illiterate
> in two languages: Los Angeles schools do not require even a basic command
> of
> written English to graduate and they were not allowed to take Spanish
> because they spoke Spanish in the home--making them illiterate in Spanish.
>
> My pebble in the pond:
>
> I was taught in my advanced grammar class in 1960 that "I was baked a cake"
> was perfectly grammatical and all in the class had heard or used similar
> phrases.  When we went to diagram the sentence we found "cake" to be the
> subject and "I" to be the indirect object.  The professor explained that
> "I" was a retained indirect object in the nominative position and I used
> that explanation for that sentence and for "He was fried three eggs"--a
> contribution from a student.
>
> Does modern English grammar still support that explanation.  All grammar
> teachers who rejected the concept had to fall back on the supposition that
> the sentences were ungrammaticalbacause they insisted that 'I' and 'He' had
> to be subjects and they had never heard of retained indirect objects in the
> nominative position; ergo, such things did not exist.
>
> Scott Catledge
>
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