Carol:  I'm not sure why you're contrasting passive, which refers to the
voice of the verb, and description, which refers to a genre of writing--but
I'll give it a try:

First, it's not the paper that was littered.  It's the floor.

The paper was SCATTERED all over the floor.  That's certainly a description
of the floor.  The active version includes the perpetrator:

Someone scattered the paper all over the floor.

Now the floor is, indeed, littered.  But I don't think you can consider
this an instance of the linking-BE.  The paper was a mess!  That's a
linking-BE, in which MESS is the complement.

SCATTER is clearly a verb; and WAS SCATTERED is its passive form.

Martha Kolln




>Dear ATEG,
>   How about the difference between passive and description? Consider the
>following two sentences:
>
>Paper was littered all over the floor. Is this littered not the complement
>after the linking verb?
>
>Paper was littered all over the floor by Howard. Is this the passive because
>there is now a prepositional phrase?
>
>I would love a reply.
>carol
>
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