Christine & Carol & al.
I wonder if this distinction we make between the passive voice of a verb and the past participle used as an adjective is more imagined than real. It seems clear enough that the decision would help us when it came to translating our sentence into Latin or another language where the passive voice has a distinct form. Yet even then there are times when their constructions are ambiguous. The presence of the adverb of extent ("widely") modifying the participle makes us want to claim that the participle is now an adjective for sure. Still, its meaning is virtually the same as the agent phrase ("by many people") would be, so that translation into an active sentence could occur. So the distinction is not so much in the meaning as it is in the syntax. And in English the syntactic differences are negligible, 1) passive voice is more or less clear when there is an agent phrase, and 2) the past participle as a gradable adjective is clear when there is an adverb of extent. We're on the borderline when the agent phrase looks like a manner phrase or when there is no adverb of extent expressed.
Carol,
I asked a similar question last year. One explanation I received was that
there are two possibilites with the passive construction.
The curtains were closed by the nurse. (Obviously passive voice)
When I entered, the curtains were closed. (More of a description unless the
action happened just as I entered)
I find this hard to explain to students who are just learning passive
construction and linking verbs.
--
Christine Reintjes Martin
[log in to unmask]>From: Carol Eisenhower <
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>Reply-To: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
><
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>To:
[log in to unmask]>Subject: Past participle as Adjective or Verb
>Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2005 13:47:01 -0500
>
>Hi All
>I teach a basic grammar class for college freshmen, and the text that
>I'm using identifies the following sentence as S+LV+SC
>"Martin Lurther King Jr. was widely admired."
>To me "was admired" looks like a passive verb phrase similar to the
>following:
>"The children were frightened by the monster."
>Can someone help me with what I'm missing here?
>Thanks
>Carol
>
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