I am grateful to all of you for this discussion. For the past several years,
the bonus question on the final exam for my grammar course has been to
diagram a rather long, multi-clause sentence that begins, "I was born on
August 27 . . . "
I hoped students would recognize that "born" is passive here, and the
stronger students always did. It never occurred to me that it wasn't.
Ah, all those wasted extra credit points . . .
And, yes, I still teach sentence diagramming--and believe, as do my
students, that the process helps them become stronger writers if it is used
appropriately (and therein lies the rub).
But it is not my intention to put THAT subject on the table here again!
Nancy
Nancy L. Tuten, PhD
Professor of English
Director of the Writing-across-the-Curriculum Program
Columbia College
Columbia, South Carolina
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803-786-3706
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock
Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2006 7:13 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: BEAR and time "I was born poor."
It makes sense to think that being born is something that happens to
us, but we can't do to someone else.
A number of behavioural verbs are routinely intransitive: fainting and
dying come to mind. It may be that the form is passive, but the sense
intransitive. (involuntary). We say that the child "was brought into
the world" or "came into the world" and both seem reasonable ways to
look at it. (Was it Cosby (Huxtable) who said to Theo "I brought you
into the world and I can take you out of it?") Interesting. It
certainly reveals something about the complex way in which we
understand the process of "borning".
Craig
>
That is an interesting insight, Edith.
>
> It seems that the two uses of the verb 'bear' refer to different points in
> the time period of the event denoted by the verb 'bear'. That is, when we
> speak of a mother bearing children, we are usually referring to the period
> of
> pregnancy. When we speak about being born, we are referring to the end
> state
> that the act of bearing results in.
>
> So really, we seem to be talking about two different verbs: "Bear 1"
> refers
> to the act of carrying a baby, and "Bear 2" can only really be used to
> refer
> to the point in time in which the mother's bearing event has culminated
> in
> the passage of the baby out of her body.
>
> Bear 1 seems to behave like a normal (irregular) verb (though the passive
> is
> a little odd for me. Maybe it's the time reference.):
>
> A. My mother bore me for nine months in Egypt.
> B. ? I was borne by my mother for nine months in Egypt.
>
> Bear 2 seems to refer only to the time at which the baby passes out of
> the
> mother's body; that is, it only refers to the end of the act of bearing,
> BUT
> it does not act like a passive because you cannot add the agent
> 'mother.' And
> there seems to be no other active form of this verb. So is this just a
> unique use of the past participle of Bear 1?
>
> C. He was born on Nov 17 at 11:20 pm.
> D. *He was born at 11:20 pm by his mother.
>
> I wonder what other verbs behave this way.
>
> Linda Di
>
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