That's what I teach my prospective teachers.  I call it the illegitimate
child of the helping verb family because it is stigmatized.  To me, it
doesn't seem acceptable for formal writing, but it is so prevalent, I
think it's hopeless to rail against it.

 

Janet

 

________________________________

From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Scott Woods
Sent: Friday, February 20, 2009 7:33 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: he was run over/he got run over

 

List,

My previous message on this topic delivered itself before I had finished
it.  Here is the complete message.

 

Recently, a student wrote "he got run over."  This seems to be a common
way of expressing the passive.

 

Would you characterize this as a passive?  Would you analyze "run" as
the verb of the sentence and "got" as a modal operating like "was" in a
normally constructed (was run over) passive?  

Scott Woods  

 


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