Janet,

I don't know what the origin of the construction is, but I usually explain
this to my students in terms of auxiliary choice for the perfect:

in the present perfect, for certain verbs, you have 2 possibilities (in
American English at least; I don't think the variants are acceptable in
British English):

finish:  I have finished           I am finished (also with 'done')

go:      She has gone              She is gone

So I don't think they are passive at all, although you could say that they
have a more 'stative' meaning than the corresponding version with 'have';
they seem to refer more explicitly to the result whereas the 'have'
version refers more clearly to the action (but this is all very
speculative).

Marie
France

>
> I was working with a group of ESL students discussing complex verb
>> phrases.  We discussed this sentence: "He had finished with his homework
>> by
>> the time he arrived."  One of the students asked whether it would be
>> acceptable to say "He was finished with his homework by the time he
>> arrived."  I said it would be, but to my chagrin, I could not explain
>> the
>> verb phrase.  I sent query below to [log in to unmask]
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
>> Sent: Friday, May 18, 2007 8:00 PM
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: QUESTION FOR THE GRAMMARIAN
>>
>>
>> From: [log in to unmask]
>>      Subject: passives, phrasal verbs
>>      Message:  I was recently confronted with this sentence: He was
>> finished with his home work by the time he arrived.  Problem: Although
>> the
>> construction is BE + Past participle, this doesn't appear to be either a
>> passive or a linking verb plus adjective.  Additionally, I suspect that
>> the
>> main verb is phrasal: finish with.  Most uses of this construction seem
>> pretty straightforward: He will finish with his studies in June; he had
>> finished with his studies by the time I knew him, etc.  I'm just not
>> sure
>> how to analyze the 'was finished with' construction. Now I'm wondering
>> if 'to be finished with' is verbal idom. What am I missing?  Thanks
>> Janet
>> Castilleja
>>
>>  And I got this reply:
>>
>> Here is a list of phrasal verbs. "Finish with" is not part of it, as you
>> can see. As for analyzing that particular sentence fragment, I think
>> it's
>> just the imperfect tense. Hope this helps.
>> 	Athena Sargent
>> 	http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/phrasals.htm
>>
>> 'Finish with' is listed as a phrasal verb in Phrasal Verbs (Courtney,
>> 1983,
>> Longman), but with not quite the same meaning.  I already knew this when
>> I
>> sent the question to grammar_q.  I had also spent some time with Quirk,
>> Leech, Greenbaum and Svartik as well as the Oxford and Cambridge
>> grammars
>> without coming up with a satisfactory explanation - false passive?
>> idiomatic phrasal verb?
>>
>> Most of the resources I've looked at don't even seem to acknowledge an
>> imperfect 'tense' in English, although I've found some interesting
>> discusions of 'imperfective' vs 'perfective.'
>>
>> What are your thoughts?  This is currently occupying way too much of my
>> time.
>>
>>
>> Janet Castilleja
>>
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