Grammar Help Please!!

[clover]

I am joining a grammar class on monday morning and my teacher asked me to make the plan. The lesson is on the passive tense, which they've just covered in their grammar and reading classes.
When I checked it over with my teacher, she asked that I also cover passive phrases such as be born, be surprised, be injured and such. She says these phrases in Japanese are always in the present tense, so students need to be aware of the difference. But here is my problem - I'm pretty sure these aren't called passive phrases. What are they called? I rarely do grammar classes and this bit has me confused.

For the verb 'to play' you can make it 'to be played' (eg football has been played for centuries)
But you cant do something like that with 'to be born' right?
What's this kind of verb called? How do I explain the difference between 'football interests me', 'I am interested in football', and 'I have an interest in football'?

I know this is my first language, but I just don't get it!
Help!

[ondraedan]

Well, for a start the "interest" in "I have an interest in football" is a noun, not a passive verb, and the passive voice is a way of describing only verbs in certain structures.

Let me tell you, I was an English student, and I'm with you: I know how a thing is, but not necessarily why. The most important thing is never to give away that you don't know, simply make up some random reason which will help the students remember the point, or simply do what I normally do. The thing about language is it's just a systematic structure. There is no logic apart from an internal logic of agreement. So sometimes the answer to "why is this like that?" is simply "just because". That would be my instinctive answer to the question, "why is the past participle used in the passive voice and not the present tense like Japanese?"

Anyway, the main difference between the active and passive voices, obviously, is that the subject and object are switched so that in the active voice the subject acting on the verb becomes acted on by the verb in the passive voice. The SVO structure in English is one of the first things Japanese learn about English, so just keep everything nice and labelled.

And yes, any verb in the form be + past participle is a passive verb. Simply make example sentences, swapping the subject and object if you are not sure:

- My baby will be born (by me) in March / I will bear my baby in March...
- I am surprised by you / You surprise me...
- I was injured in a freak accident / The freak accident injured me...

You can hear that sometimes the passive voice sounds much more natural and the active sounds forced. Again, that is just a matter of convention, "just because".

As for an actual lesson plan, I'm crap at those so you're on your own...

[mingpagoda]

The best definition I could find was this:

The Active Voice of a verb is used when the subject of the verb refers to the person or thing performing the action described by the verb.

In contrast, the Passive Voice of a verb is used when the subject of the verb refers to the person or thing receiving the action described by the verb. Only a verb which can take an object can be put into the Passive Voice.

The Passive Voice is more commonly used in English than it is in other European languages such as German or French. As well as being used in everyday English, the Passive Voice is used extensively in official documents and scientific papers.

In the following examples, the verbs in the Passive Voice are underlined.
e.g. The ball was struck by the boy.
Gold has been found by the explorers.
In these examples, the verbs was struck and has been found are in the Passive Voice. The subjects ball and gold refer to things receiving the actions described by the verbs.


From: http://www.ingilizceci.net/GrammarMaryA ... mch12.html

The University of Purdue also had a few good examples:
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/ ... tpass.html

I believe, someone please correct me as this is pure speculation, that the difference lies in the relationships between subject, object and verb. Using their example above:

The ball was struck by the boy. (Passive)
The boy struck the ball. (Active)

The boy changes from the object in passive and the subject in the active tense.

And it looks like ondraedan beat me to the punch for the rest as I was typing this up...

[gary]

I think the easiest way to deal with it is by giving just straightforward SVO type sentences.

Da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa. (SVO)

and reversing the order to

The Mona Lisa was painted by Da Vinci

In other words, the original object becomes the subject. The Passive is handy when you don't want to mention the subject:


Everest was climbed in 1952. [Tenzing and Hillary climbed Everest in 1952]
Toyota cars are built in Japan. [Factory workers build ...]

'to be born' is already the passive. His mother bore him in 1922 being the unused active form!

[clover]

Thanks for the help everyone, the lesson was a success! I think my teacher just threw me off with the 'passive phrases' bit. I managed to be clear on when we use the passive form and that sometines we use the passive form just because, like the to be born bit Gary mentioned.

Tonya also sent me this link, and the flashcards worked wonderfully in the class, so for future reference here you go:

http://www.ac-nancy-metz.fr/enseign/ang ... passif.htm

[mingpagoda]

Glad to hear that the class went well and those flash cards were helpful!

[clover]

So, I got Fox In Socks when I went home as I thought it would be fun for my Eikaiwa students to read. More fool me. They're very advanced and have utterly dissected the book. Eventually it got to the point where I had no clue what was going on, so I need your help. Again.

On page 21 Sue comes along. It goes:

"Who sews whose socks?
Sue sews Sue's socks.

Who sees who sew
whose new socks, sir?
You see Sue sew
Sue's new socks, sir.

That's not easy Mr. Fox, sir."

Their question(s) is:
Here "sew" is the infinitive of the verb, right? When a verb and a complimentary verb are used in a sentance, shouldn't the complimentary verb be the continuous form? - "You see Sue sewing Sue's new socks, sir." As this is a children's rhyming book, has the author simply bent grammatical rules to suit the story? Finally, these sentances are in the 3rd person. Are there different rules for the 1st and 2nd person?

Please help me if you can. Thanks.

[sok-jokky]

"Who sews whose socks? (infinitive)
Sue sews Sue's socks. (infinitive)

Who sees who sew (past tense) whose new socks, sir?
You see (to understand) Sue sew (past tense) Sue's new socks, sir.

That's not easy Mr. Fox, sir."

that's how I'd read this. if this is obvious, and you were asking something else, it went way over my deadhead

who reads whose posts?
clover reads clover's posts
who sees who read whose new posts, sir?
you see clover read clover's new posts, sir.

that's not easy Mr. Fox, sir

[clover]

Oh my god. I still don't get it. How do you know it's the past tense? "Sews" is the infinitive? I thought the infinitive in English was the part you add "to" to - to sew, to cry etc. Is it not? I think I may quit. Clearly English is not my strong point. I should go teach something easier. Like trigonometry.

[sok-jokky]

infinitive is the plain form of a verb ( I think ). 'to' isn't necessary ( I could be wrong ) to is required to create a split infinitive ( possibly )
I hate grammar too. as natural speakers it can be difficult to explain why something is a certain way, we just know it is. in many regards the Japanese english teachers are better equiped for these kind of problems, as they learnt english as a second language.

anyway it seems to me that this poem is partly playing on a verb that has the same spelling in past tense, as present. like read, beat etc ( but I could be wrong, I think, possibly)

[sibreen]

who sews whose socks = indicative

who sees who sew whose new socks, sir = accusative infinitive construction. the second 'who' ought more correctly be 'whom' (compare, 'i see he play football' and 'i see him play football' where the former is evidently wrong). 'whom' has fallen out of common usage, however..

it may be better to think of the infinitive as a grammatical concept rather than a fixed form. both 'sew' and 'to sew' can be grammatically infinitive (for example, a look at other germanic languages shows that, grammatically speaking, the 'go' in 'i can go' is infinitive). similarly, though 'sew' in 'who sees who sew..' is not 'to sew', that doesnt preclude its being infinitive.

"When a verb and a complimentary verb are used in a sentance, shouldn't the complimentary verb be the continuous form? - "You see Sue sewing Sue's new socks, sir." "
it is possible to say, 'i saw him play football' and 'i saw him playing football'. they are simply different constructions: the latter is a participle which in a grammatically more explicit language would be shown to be an accusative.

[sok-jokky]

I hate this game, sir.
This game makes my tongue quite lame, sir

[clover]

Thank you guys. I'm going to have to read this about 7 more times to understand it though, but thanks so much for your help.