In her ESL texts, Betty Azar calls these stative passives. Basically, they derive from a passive voice, but the action is long gone and the current situation is adjectival. The door was locked, the dishes were done, etc.
Edith Wollin
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock
Sent: Thursday, May 13, 2010 9:47 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Pullum on Strunk and White and a question about a passive
Linda,
I think you need more than one step in the analysis.
1) Past participles following verb "to be are often ambiguous. "The window was broken by the tree branch." "The window was broken when we got there." The first seems to me passive, the second an adjective, though clearly an adjective that carries with it some of the meaning we associate with the passive.
2) When we negate a verb phrase, we tend to negate the finite. Your analysis is helpful--"never" might be better than "not", but "not" contracts with the auxiliary--"wasn't ever questioned" would orient toward question as verb (and therefore passive.)
When we negate an adjective, we tend to use -un, as in "unbroken" or "unlucky" ("The window was unbroken by the tree" seems a stretch. But we could easily say "The window was unbroken when we got there.") "The information from a book was unquestioned by everyone in the class" seems very awkward to me, perhaps because it implies an active process for something that was never even considered as possible by the possible agents.
In other words, "un" as prefix construes it as adjective.
But adjectives derived from verbs will always carry some of their verbness, hence the fuzziness.
Craig
Linda Di Desidero wrote:
I don't know whether "unquestioned" is what Rodriguez means to say. When
you think of that word, it is certainly odd in that sentence (at least
to me).
I think he means
"The information gathered from a book was never questioned."
And THAT would be a passive.
To say that something is 'unquestioned' strikes me as possibly an
informal use of language (as is Nicholas Sparks's use of past tense).
We can say that something, e.g. authority, is unquestionable, but what
does it mean to say that it is unquestioned? What would the difference
be between 'unquestioned' and 'unquestionable'? The only answer that
seems sensible to me is that 'unquestioned' is an informal way of saying
'never questioned.'
Linda
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Linda Di Desidero, Ph.D.
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