Janet,
All by itself, you would think of "was finished" or "was finished with"
as passive. Think for example of "his homework was finished by the time
he arrived." But here we clearly have an actor as subject.
Past participles are also adjectives (the finished homework), so the
"was" followed by past participle can be ambigious. "The clock was
broken when I got here" doesn't come across as passive; the was seems
copular. All this is speculative, but I would guess "finished with his
homework" is copular complement of VP "was".
"The puzzle was solved." In context, it's passive (The puzzle was
solved by charlie) or just an adjective acting as complement. "I found
no need to worry about that puzzle. The puzzle was solved."
The sentence is a sentence about him rather than his homework. Being
"finished with your homework" in my house means you can do other
things.
I hope that helps.
Craig >
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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