# English: Indirect object becoming the subject of the passive voice



## berndf

*Moderator note: Split from here.*



e2-e4 X said:


> Therefore the subject is _I_, right?


Right.


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## Hulalessar

e2-e4 X said:


> Therefore the subject is _I_, right?



No.

"I was given a book" is a special form where the usual rules of word order do not apply and where "I" is allowed to replace "me". It is clearly the book which is undergoing the giving and therefore the subject of the sentence. If we ask what the indirect object of the sentence is it is "I" because it is "I" who is getting the book.

Compare the examples given above:

_ Daniel was given a book. 

Daniel was given to the lions.
_ 
In the first case it is not Daniel who is being given, but the book. In the second case it is Daniel who is being given.

*Moderator note: Earlier posts on the subject which has been removed from the original thread:
*


Hulalessar said:


> _I am given a book_ sounds slightly odd on its own simply because it is not the sort of thing likely to be said when actually being given a book. However, _I am given a book every time I come top of the class_ sounds fine because although in the present tense it does not refer to something happening at the time of speaking. Generally, the form is more likely to be found in the past tense. Since the first and third persons are identical that probably explains how the form arose. The history goes something like this:
> 
> In Old English word order was much freer than in Modern English. _Me was given a book _was perfectly possible, if not more often found. As inflections were dropped word order became more fixed, but the form _Me was given a book _persisted. Eventually, it began to be felt that having "me" at the start of a sentence was wrong because generally "me" did not come before a verb. Rather than abandon the form, the word order was preserved but "me" was replaced by "I". Finally, the form became so naturalised that it extended to nouns. In _Daniel was given a book_ "Daniel" is the indirect object, whereas in _Daniel was given to the lions_ "Daniel" is the subject.
> 
> If put in the present tense if you start with "I" you have to follow it with "am" because "am" and not "is" always follows "I". So, despite the form of both pronoun and verb, in _I am given a book_ "I" is still the indirect object.





francisgranada said:


> Hulalessar said:
> 
> 
> 
> _I am given a book_ sounds slightly odd on its own simply because it is not the sort of thing likely to be said when actually being given a book. However, _I am given a book every time I come top of the class_ sounds fine because although in the present tense it does not refer to something happening at the time of speaking. Generally, the form is more likely to be found in the past tense ....
> 
> 
> 
> I agree, of course  (I'm not a native speaker). Your explanation is perfectly understandable and clear to me, I've chosen this example only for simplicity. However, thanks for the explanation and for your patience.
> 
> As to the construction itself, maybe it's worth to open a new thread ...
Click to expand...




merquiades said:


> francisgranada said:
> 
> 
> 
> I agree, of course  (I'm not a native speaker). Your explanation is perfectly understandable and clear to me, I've chosen this example only for simplicity. However, thanks for the explanation and for your patience.
> As to the construction itself, maybe it's worth to open a new thread ...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The explanation is perfect.
> This structure is about as flawed and illogical as it gets. Learners of English are asked to use structures that make no sense to native speakers and are questionable. This pretty much summarizes the theme of this thread.  Can something be correct by consensus? I suppose in the end simplification and analogy is what brought down Latin, Sanskrit and Slavonic.
Click to expand...


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## e2-e4 X

Hulalessar said:


> "I was given a book" is a special form where the usual rules of word order do not apply and where "I" is allowed to replace "me".


"The book was given me"? "Me was given a book"? No way, as it seems. Only with the "to"; and with the "to" it is a different sentence, just compare: "To I was given a book".


> Compare the examples given above:
> 
> _ Daniel was given a book.
> 
> Daniel was given to the lions.
> _
> In the first case it is not Daniel who is being given, but the book. In the second case it is Daniel who is being given.


But in both cases Daniel takes the major part in what happens; it is his state which is concerned the most, even though in the first case he does nothing by himself (and neither does the book, which was being moved by someone else).

In the second case we have a passive form of the verb "to give", and in the first case we have an /incorrect/ English verb "to be given" (copular? transitive? if it's transitive, then it's active).


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## berndf

Hulalessar said:


> No.


I strongly disagree. In English, contrary to most other European languages, the indirect object of the active voice *can* become the subject of the passive voice. The direct and indirect objects are symmetrical in this respect. Of course, this was originally a dative. But this is long gone and modern speakers have to intuition for it any more (look in the German forum how English speakers struggle to understand the difference between _mir ist kalt_ and _ich bin kalt_). "I" in _I am given a book _should be considered a normal subject and the tag question _wasn't I?_ does indeed support this view.


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## Hulalessar

berndf said:


> I strongly disagree. In English, contrary to most other European languages, the indirect object of the active voice *can* become the subject of the passive voice. The direct and indirect objects are symmetrical in this respect. Of course, this was originally a dative. But this is long gone and modern speakers have to intuition for it any more (look in the German forum how English speakers struggle to understand the difference between _mir ist kalt_ and _ich bin kalt_). "I" in _I am given a book _should be considered a normal subject and the tag question _wasn't I?_ does indeed support this view.



That surely cannot be a correct analysis.

Consider:

_Mary was sent to London

__Mary was sent a letter
_
In the first case if we ask who or what was sent the answer is "Mary". "Mary" is the subject of the sentence.

In the second case if we ask who or what was sent the answer is "the letter". "The letter" is the subject of the sentence. If we ask to whom the sent was sent the answer is "Mary". "Mary" is the indirect object. If "Mary" is the subject, then what is "the letter"?


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## berndf

Hulalessar said:


> That surely cannot be a correct analysis.
> 
> Consider:
> 
> _Mary was sent to London
> 
> __Mary was sent a letter
> _
> In the first case if we ask who or what was sent the answer is "Mary". "Mary" is the subject of the sentence.
> 
> In the second case if we ask who or what was sent the answer is "the letter". "The letter" is the subject of the sentence. If we ask to whom the sent was sent the answer is "Mary". "Mary" is the indirect object. If "Mary" is the subject, then what is "the letter"?


_Who was sent a letter? Mary._ If Mary were still to be analysed as a dative the question had to be: *_Whom was sent a letter?_


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## merquiades

Hulalessar said:


> That surely cannot be a correct analysis.
> 
> Consider:
> 
> _Mary was sent to London
> 
> __Mary was sent a letter
> _
> In the first case if we ask who or what was sent the answer is "Mary". "Mary" is the subject of the sentence.
> 
> In the second case if we ask who or what was sent the answer is "the letter". "The letter" is the subject of the sentence. If we ask to whom the sent was sent the answer is "Mary". "Mary" is the indirect object. If "Mary" is the subject, then what is "the letter"?



Even if we now use "I" instead of "me" at the beginning of a sentence, there is still a latent direct object hidden in there with the passive aspect.

Mary was sent to London (by me) = passive
I sent Mary to London =  active

I was sent to London (by Mary) = passive
Mary sent me to London = active

Here it is an indirect object with passive that is implicit:
Mary was sent a letter (by me)
I sent Mary a letter

I was sent a letter (by Mary)
Mary sent me a letter.

By whom was the letter sent?


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## berndf

merquiades said:


> I'd agree.  Even if we now use "I" instead of "me" at the beginning of a sentence, there is still a latent direct object hidden in there with the passive aspect.
> 
> Mary was sent to London (by me) = passive
> I sent Mary to London =  active
> 
> I was sent to London (by Mary) = passive
> Mary sent me to London = active
> 
> Mary was sent a letter (by me)
> I sent Mary a letter
> 
> I was sent a letter (by Mary)
> Mary sent me a letter


I am a bit confused. You say you agree with Hulalessar but your example would demonstrate, if anything, the contrary: Suggesting a symmetry between
_I was sent to London (by Mary)_
and
_I was sent a letter (by Mary)_
would corroborate the thesis that "I" is the subject in _I was sent a letter_ because it undoubtedly is the subject in _I was sent to London_.


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## merquiades

berndf said:


> I am a bit confused. You say you agree with Hulalessar but your example would demonstrate, if anything, the contrary: Suggesting a symmetry between
> _I was sent to London (by Mary)_
> and
> _I was sent a letter (by Mary)_
> would corroborate the thesis that "I" is the subject in _I was sent a letter_ because it undoubtedly is the subject in _I was sent to London_.



Sorry for the confusion. Check my edit.  After thinking about it, I reformulated the second part as I realized that "I" in the two examples didn't have the same function.  Yet, I still don't believe it's a real subject pronoun.
For me:  "I" is not a subject.  In the first case "I" replaces a direct object "me".  In the second case "I" replaces an indirect object "(to) me".  Even though some time in the past "(to) me" was changed to "I" when it was deemed we couldn't start a sentence with "(to) me" in English, "I" is still filling the function of an object (indirect or direct)


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## Hulalessar

berndf said:


> _Who was sent a letter? Mary._ If Mary were still to be analysed as a dative the question had to be: *_Whom was sent a letter?_



But the point is that you can no more say*_Whom was sent a letter?_ than you can say *_Me was sent a letter.
_
As I explained above the construction was first found with personal pronouns. The standard word order was at one time: indirect object pronoun, verb, subject. As inflections declined so the general word order in the language became subject, verb, object, but in this type of construction the old word order persisted, but it began to be felt that an indirect object pronoun at the start of a sentence was incorrect. Accordingly _Me was given a book_ became _I was_ _given a book _- a case of hypercorrection arising from the feeling that a sentence had to start with _I_ rather than _me_. From there it was only a short step to _John was given a book._


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## berndf

Hulalessar said:


> ...the construction was first found with personal pronouns.


Where did you get that from?


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## berndf

Anyway, the interpretation of the indirect object turning into the subject in passive voice has been commonplace in grammar books for a long time*. The construct is interpreted as a "retained accusative" (similar to Greek). Note how I phrased the question in #82: _Who was sent a letter?_, not _Who was sent?_ The presence of the direct object is essential for the validity of the construct.
__________________________
_* E.g. C.T.Onions, Modern English Syntax, §42; First published 1905._


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## Hulalessar

berndf said:


> Where did you get that from?



I read it in a book a long time ago.

However, that "I" could not be the subject in "I was given a book" arose when I was learning French. When the passive came up we were naturally taught that in many situations French prefers a construction with "on", but that constructions with "être" were possible. However, we were warned to be on our guard against translating "I was given a book" as "*J'étais donné une livre." That "I" was not the subject in such constructions was not something I had previously needed to consider, but when explained it seemed to me (as it still does) that it is irrefutable that that was the case. Up until then I would probably have said that where a sentence starts with "I" it must be the subject of the sentence.



berndf said:


> Anyway, the interpretation of the indirect object turning into the subject in passive voice has been commonplace in grammar books for a long time*. The construct is interpreted as a "retained accusative" (similar to Greek). Note how I phrased the question in #82: _Who was sent a letter?, not Who was sent? The presence of the direct object is essential for the validity of the construct._



I have done a bit of Googling and read about promotions when turning the verb of a sentence from active to passive. However, some of the examples involving verbs like "give" and "send" are very dubious.

When describing a language you have to describe it as you find it and not by reference to its history or any other language. If you ask the questions I posed above I do not see how any other conclusion can be reached than that in "I was given a book" the subject is "a book" and that "I" is the indirect object because what is being given is "the book" and who is receiving it is "I".

However, we can call in aid the history to confirm the point. In the older form "Me was given a book" it is immediately apparent that "me" is the indirect object. If by hypercorrection "me" becomes "I", "I" does not suddenly become the subject of the sentence simply because "I" is a subject pronoun. If in "I was given a book" the indirect object is "I" then in "Mary was given a book" the indirect object must be "Mary".

Again, whilst not necessary, we can emphasise the point further by translating "Mary was given a book" into Latin. Using only the words "Mary", "book" and a passive form of "give" the only possible translation (but with the words in any order you like) to indicate that it is Mary who got the book is "Mariae liber donatus est". "Mariae" is dative indicating that it is the indirect object and "liber" nominative indicating that it is the subject. Latin and English have different grammars but are not so different that we have to rethink what we mean by "subject", "indirect object" and "passive voice". If the only possible translation into Latin using my criteria requires "Mariae" i.e. the dative, then in the English version "Mary" must be the indirect object.


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## berndf

Hulalessar, 

For the purpose of this discussion it suffices to note that the interpretation I described is current text book opinion and can therefore not be described as an "error", irrespective of what you think of this opinion. It has never been denied that the current usage developed out of a dative in first position. What matters here is synchronic and not diachronic analysis.

One last comment about Latin: It is not frequent but a few retained accusatives are attested also in Latin. E.g.:
_Sed Caesar, ubi ad eum ventum est, rogatus sententiam a consule...
But __Caesar, when it was his term [and who was] asked [his] opinion<accusative> by the consul...
(Sallust, The Catilinian Conspiracy)_


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## francisgranada

Also for the purpose of this discussion:

_Caesar ... rogatus sententiam a consule _is ok,  but _Caesar ... datus librum a consule _(meaning "_Caesar ... [was] given a book by the consul")_ would be acceptable, too?


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## Hamlet2508

_Caesar ... rogatus sententiam a consule _(=accusativus Graecus) 

_Caesar*i* ... datus lib*er*__
a consule _(meaning "_Caesar ... [was] given a book by the consul")_


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## francisgranada

Yes, and that's why my question (#92). _Caesar rogatus sententiam _... is understandable "sponeaousely" (also from the point of view of some modern languages). But  _Caesar datus librum ... _is wrong, while in English _Caesar was given a book, _instead of _To Caesar was given a book,_ is ok ...


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## berndf

The retained accusative is quite rare in Latin. As the term _accusativus Graecus _indicates, it is an imitation of Greek.


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## Hulalessar

berndf said:


> What matters here is synchronic and not diachronic analysis.



Absolutely. I did say: "When describing a language you have to describe it as you find it and not by reference to its history or any other language." I brought history in because explaining how the construction arose helps to explain the peculiarity (if that is the right word to use). I brought Latin in because when you have to translate from your own language to another it sometimes makes you realise that your own language sometimes behaves in "odd" ways.

Let's try a different analysis:

A. John sent a letter

B. A letter was sent by John

Both are equivalent in that they convey the same information: there was a sending; the thing sent was a letter; John did the sending. In both cases John was the agent and the letter was the patient. In A, where the verb is active, John is the subject, whilst in B, where the verb is passive, the letter is the subject. In a passive sentence the patient is the subject.

Now let's bring Mary into it:

C. John sent a letter to Mary

D. A letter was sent by John to Mary

Nothing has changed. In both cases John is still the agent and the letter the patient and in D the letter is still the subject. Mary is the direct object

Next we take John out of D:

E. A letter was sent to Mary

The letter is still the subject and patient and Mary the indirect object.

Now we bring in the "peculiar" construction:

F. Mary was sent a letter

F is the same as E. The letter is the patient - it is the thing sent. Since the subject of a passive verb is the patient, the subject of F must be the letter.

Now consider:

G. Mary was sent by John

In G Mary is quite clearly the patient and the subject of a passive verb - it was Mary who was sent. On the surface G looks the same as F, but the first three words function quite differently in each. If it is insisted that in both F and G Mary is the subject it is confusing outward form with function.

We can further highlight the difference between F and G because in respect of G we can ask a question which will elicit the reply: "Mary was sent", but in respect of F we cannot.

One book I read asserted that the construction was bad grammar but good English. A neat but unsatisfactory way of describing it. It is better described as a construction which confounds our expectation of what a sentence in English should be like.


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## berndf

Active: _John gave my parents a book.

_If you are right it should be:_ My parents was given a book by John.
_If I (and Onions and many other distinguished grammarians) are right it should be:_ My parents were given a book by John.

_What do you say?


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## francisgranada

berndf said:


> The retained accusative is quite rare in Latin. As the term _accusativus Graecus _indicates, it is an imitation of Greek.


Yes, in fact, trying to understand this _accusativus _from the point of view of some modern languages (e.g. Romance, Slavic, Hungarian ...), it is indeed practically a bit difficult, or at least, it should sound very artficial or (almost) inacceptable. 

But, my question is not about the _accusative _of "sententiam" or the_ nominative_ of "liber" (in the previous examples), but rather about the "logic" of the constructions  "Caesar was asked" and "Caesar was given" in English, versus the Latin (not only) "Caesar rogatus" and "Caesar datus". So, spontaneousely, I'd say that _Caesar _is in dative also in the English expression "Caesar was given", even if the "dative marker" (the preposition "to" is not present). 

If true, then then the only "problem" are the personal pronouns, where the distinction of the grammatical cases are (partially) functional (* I -* nominative,* me* [with no preposition] - dative/accusative). If we admit that there is a tendency to "eliminate" the case distinction also in the personal pronouns (e.g. _this is me_ instead of _this is I_), then constructions like _Caesar was given_, _I am given ..._ seem to be acceptable and also "logical".  

Or, alternatively, constructions like "_I am given" _are to be understood rather as _abbreviated _forms of something like "_I am (the one whom is) given"_ ? ... What is your opinion?


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## berndf

The problem is that it cannot be decided in English if "the book" is accusative or nominative. And the only substitutable is "it". The only way to tell if "I" is the subject (nominative) and "the book" the direct object (accusative) is to look at verb agreement rules. See #97 above.


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## Hulalessar

berndf said:


> Active: _John gave my parents a book.
> 
> _If you are right it should be:_ My parents was given a book by John.
> _If I (and Onions and many other distinguished grammarians) are right it should be:_ My parents were given a book by John.
> 
> _What do you say?



The point is that in the construction XYZ where X is the indirect object, Y a passive verb and Z the patient, X _is treated as if it were the subject of the sentence_. It comes at the beginning and is why we have "I was given a book". Where X is plural the verb will agree with X. To suggest that it should be "My parents was given a book" is like suggesting it should be "Me was given a book."

The problem here seems to have something to do with word order. Word order is important in English for establishing the relationship between words in a sentence, though it is of course not the sole means. We have two possible ways of defining what the subject of a sentence is, one based on where it appears in a sentence and the other based on role, that is one based on form and one based on function. If you choose the one based on form you are not concerned with function and vice versa. If the definition is based on form, which comes down to word order, then it is not surprising if in "I was given a book" it is asserted that "I" is the subject of the sentence. It does though leave you with the problem of explaining where "book" fits in because a passive verb cannot have a direct object. A definition based on function does not raise that difficulty.


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## berndf

Giving up the rule that passive verbs cannot have an accusative complement, i.e. postulating a "retained accusative", is by far the simpler and more straight forward solution than explaining

1. The uncommon word order.
2. The nominative X.
3. Agreement of Y with X and not with Z.


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## CapnPrep

berndf said:


> Giving up the rule that passive verbs cannot have an accusative complement, i.e. postulating a "retained accusative", is by far the simpler and more straight forward solution


Yes. Also:

4. the accusative case of Z: _I was given them_/_*they._
5. the possibility of control/raising (only available for the subject/external argument in English): _I hoped to be given the book_.
6. coordination of passives with a shared subject: _I was invited to the White House and given a medal by the President_.
7. the possibility of adjectival predication (again, only available for the external argument): _Most people, given the chance/the choice/a million dollars, would quit their job.
_8. anaphoric binding (reflexives and reciprocals cannot be subjects): _John was assigned himself_/_*Himself was assigned John. John and Mary were assigned each other_/_*Each other were assigned John and Mary._


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## Hulalessar

berndf said:


> Giving up the rule that passive verbs cannot have an accusative complement, i.e. postulating a "retained accusative", is by far the simpler and more straight forward solution than explaining
> 
> 1. The uncommon word order.
> 2. The nominatve X.
> 3. Agreement of Y with X and not with Z.



I cannot agree. The explanation comes over as distinctly opaque. It seems to be imposing on English a feature of Latin grammar, and a rare one at that. If you are going to bring Latin grammar into it, then why rule out a historically informed explanation?

Languages may retain features and be subject to changes explained by hypercorrection, analogy etc which do not fit neatly into rules of general application. Analytic languages in particular are inclined to resist accurate description and being straightjacketed into rules.

If word order is to be paramount, how are the following explained?

_Had I known that..._

_Little did I realise that...

What a nice house you have!

Oaths you have taken._ (OK a Tolkienian quirk of style, but it is in the film and the meaning is clear.)

What would be made of:

_Me was given the book
_
if, as is entirely possible, the construction under discussion had made it into Modern English in that form?

I think it is misconceived to place more emphasis on form than function. I once read a book which distinguished between "adjectives" and "adjectivals" based on how the comparative and superlative are formed. That leads to "large" and "enormous" being considered different parts of speech when they both perform the same function. It is as absurd as describing Spanish adjectives with the possible endings _-o_, -_a_, -_os_ and -_as _as adjectives and all others as adjectivals. Far better simply to say that English has two types of adjectives.

Let's imagine a native French speaker who has never heard of retained accusatives who is faced for the first time with "I was given a book". Since in French "*J'étais donné une livre" is not found, he going to say (in French!) "What's going on here? That doesn't look right at all!" When the meaning is explained he will surely say "So it's back to front then and the pronoun is all wrong."


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## berndf

I really don't understand what you mean by form vs. function. When you look at 1-8 (my original 3 and CaptnPrep's additional 5), we are not only talking about morphology but about all aspects of syntax.

In the construct <NP1> <finite form of _be_> <ppl> <NP2>, seen from *all* angles, <NP1> behaves like a (nominative) subject and <NP2> like an (accusative) object. Why can't we simply call it so?

I really fail to understand your problem.

French obviously lacks this syntactic feature. I fail to see the relevance of that argument.


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## CapnPrep

Actually, a similar structure does exist in French: _Je me suis fait_ (or _Je me suis vu_) _donner un livre_ (= "I got given a book"). This is considered to be a kind of passive construction (although the verb itself, _donner_, does not have passive morphology), because the agent of the verb is suppressed. And there is no question whatsoever that _un livre_ remains the direct object, while _je_ has become the syntactic subject of the sentence. Just like in English.


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## berndf

CapnPrep said:


> Actually, a similar structure does exist in French: _Je me suis fait_ (or _Je me suis vu_) _donner un livre_ (= "I got given a book"). This is considered to be a kind of passive construction (although the verb itself, _donner_, does not have passive morphology), because the agent of the verb is suppressed. And there is no question whatsoever that _un livre_ remains the direct object, while _je_ has become the syntactic subject of the sentence. Just like in English.


Right. I forgot about that. There is also structure in German and Dutch which behaves similarly, by some German grammarians called the "Bekommen-Passiv" which supplements the other two German passives, the "Sein-Passiv" and the "Werden-Passiv":
Aktiv: _Er stellt ihr eine Frage - He asks her a question_.
Werden/Sein-Passiv: _Die Frage wird/ist ihm von ihr gestellt - __The question is asked to him by her_ (the semantic difference between the forms with "wird" and "ist" is not normally expressed in English).
Bekommen-Passiv:_ Er bekommt die Frage von ihr gestellt - He is asked the question by her_.
There is also not a shadow of a doubt that "die Frage" is akkusative in the Bekommen-Passiv.


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## francisgranada

berndf said:


> ... Bekommen-Passiv:_ Er bekommt die Frage von ihr gestellt - He is asked the question by her .._.


What is the _Perfekt _of your example: _Er hat bekommen die Frage .... _or_ Er ist bekommen die Frage ... _?


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## berndf

Er hat die Frage von ihr gestellt bekommen.


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## Hulalessar

CapnPrep said:


> Actually, a similar structure does exist in French: _Je me suis fait_ (or _Je me suis vu_) _donner un livre_ (= "I got given a book"). This is considered to be a kind of passive construction (although the verb itself, _donner_, does not have passive morphology), because the agent of the verb is suppressed. And there is no question whatsoever that _un livre_ remains the direct object, while _je_ has become the syntactic subject of the sentence. Just like in English.



That is not a construction with which I am familiar, but my French is not perfect. (You no doubt noted that I got the gender of "livre" wrong above!). However, in this case I have no problem accepting that "je" is the subject of the sentence. Translated literally:_ I to myself made give a book_.


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## francisgranada

Hulalessar said:


> ... However, in this case I have no problem accepting that "je" is the subject of the sentence ...



I have a similar impression of the Berndf's example (that's why I have asked for the Perfekt). For illustration: _Er bekommt die Frage von ihr gestellt _could be translated literally e.g. in Italian as _Egli riceve la domanda da lei posta. _I don't say that this is a perfect translation, but grammatically it seems to be ok (at least for me). On the other hand, the literal translation of _He is given the question ... (*__Egli è posta la domanda ...)_ is wrong even grammatically.

So, simplifying all what has been said, my conclusion could be as follows: 

1. The undeclined form of a noun in English can today represent the former nominative, accusative and dative cases, while e.g. in the Romance languages the dative has to be explicitely marked by a preposition ("a"). That's why such constructions _could _arise in English, but not in (some) other languages.

2. The _etymological _dative has been later interpreted as nominative (for reasons that have been already explained in this discussion), that's why _I was given ..._ and not _*Me was given ..._. Such constructions seem to be "strange" when analyzing them from a general "IE" point of view, but they seem to be totally "normal" when speaking English.  

3. Where is the problem  ? ...  (a "new" grammatical construction was "born" some time ago and we are the witnesses ...).


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## Forero

I can't help but notice that the object of a preposition can sometimes be made into a passive subject...

_Someone is writing in my book._ -> _My book is being written in _(_by someone_)_._

...and that Berndf's 1-3 and CapnPrep's 5-7 apply here too. CapnPrep's 4 and 8 depend on retained direct objects, which seem to be a problem:

_Someone is writing something in my book._ -> _My book is being written something in _(_by someone_)_._
_They made hash of me._ -> _I was made hash of (by them)._ [OK, but not a good candidate for CapnPrep's 4 or 8] 

The only object of _in_ in my first example and of _of_ in this last is the subject of the sentence, if that makes sense. (Sorry, I don't know anything about the history of such things.)

I am not sure what exactly this says about the matter at hand, but I think it is relevant.

I also can't help but notice that indirect objects can often be "translated" to prepositional phrases, but...

_They gave me a book._ -> _I was given a book (by them)._
_They gave a book to me._ -> _I was given a book to (by them)._ [A little strange, but workable]
_It was John who was given a book._ [I would not put a _to_ in this sentence.]

_She asked me a question._ -> _I was asked a question (by her)._
_She asked a question of me._ -> _I was asked a question of (by her)._ [workable]
_It was John who was asked a question._  [I would not put an _of_ in this sentence.]

_He did me a favor._ -> _I was done a favor (by him)._
_He did a favor for me._ -> _I was done a favor for (by him)._ [strange, but workable]
_It was John who was done a favor._  [I would not put a _for_ in this sentence.]


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## CapnPrep

francisgranada said:


> 3. Where is the problem  ? ...  (a "new" grammatical construction was "born" some time ago and we are the witnesses ...).


The problem is that there is total disagreement in this thread about the proper synchronic analysis of the English construction. As for the historical development, before drawing any conclusions, I'd prefer to have a fuller picture of the facts, with real sources (i.e. not just "I read it in a book a long time ago").

But the historical considerations and the comparisons to other languages are really beside the point. Let's look at how two of the claims made above about the English passive stand up against the facts of English:


Hulalessar said:


> the subject of a passive verb is the patient


Not always. It can have one of many possible semantic functions. As Forero just pointed out, these functions are often expressed using prepositions: *theme* (_I am seen and feared by all_), *location* (_The bed has been slept in_), *path/direction* (_The bridge was crossed/walked across_), *goal* (_The summit was reached_, _I was approached by several ninjas_), *instrument* (_These chopsticks were eaten with by Chairman Mao_), *beneficiary/cause* (_Evita was cried for by Argentina_), etc. And it can be a *recipient*: _I was rewarded_/_compensated with 2000 AAPL shares_,_ The charity was contributed/donated to by eccentric millionaires_.

So we cannot conclude a priori that in _I was given a book_, the only possible subject is the patient _the book_. The semantic function of _I_ (recipient) is compatible with the syntactic function of subject, and all of the other properties of the sentence show that _I_ is indeed the subject.


Hulalessar said:


> a passive verb cannot have a direct object


Yes, it can. _I was taken *unfair advantage* of_, _We were opened *fire* upon_, _She was made *a complete fool* of_. _John was elected *mayor*_, _Mary was considered *a hero*_, _Lancelot was made *a knight of the Round Table*._

So in _I was given a book_, _a book_ can be the direct object of _given_, and all of the other properties of the sentence show that _a book _is indeed the direct object.


----------



## Hulalessar

berndf said:


> I really don't understand what you mean by form vs. function. When you look at 1-8 (my original 3 and CaptnPrep's additional 5), we are not only talking about morphology but about all aspects of syntax



Maybe I am not using the correct terminology, but when using "form" and "function" I was not referring only to morphology but also to syntax.



berndf said:


> In the construct <NP1> <finite form of be> <ppl> <NP2>, seen from all angles, <NP1> behaves like a (nominative) subject and <NP2> like an (accusative) object. Why can't we simply call it so?



The key word there is "behaves". Just because A behaves like B does not mean it is B. In the Latin retained accusative just because the noun is in the accusative does not mean it is the direct object of a verb. Bringing in the Latin retained accusative only confuses the issue because the accusative case in Latin is not confined to marking the direct object of a verb.

Is it not in the very nature of a passive verb that it is intransitive and cannot have a direct object?



berndf said:


> French obviously lacks this syntactic feature. I fail to see the relevance of that argument.



It was not so much an argument as trying to put a different perspective.

*

The subject of a passive verb is surely the person or thing undergoing the action described by the verb.

Take

_Mary was sent by John_

and we have no difficulty seeing that Mary is being sent.

If we remove the last two words to leave

_Mary was sent_

it is still Mary who is being sent.

However if we take

_Mary was sent a book_

but take away the last two words to leave

_Mary was sent_

we are again left with the idea that it is Mary who was sent when it was the book which was sent. How can the book not be the subject of the verb?


----------



## CapnPrep

Hulalessar said:


> Is it not in the very nature of a passive verb that it is intransitive and cannot have a direct object?


No. The very nature of a passive verb is that the active subject is suppressed. Some other argument may be promoted into subject function, but this is not a necessary property of the passive construction. For English passives with direct objects, see my message above (as well as the original example of this thread).

Since you like French, consider impersonal passives like _Il a été publié beaucoup d'articles, Il sera détruit une centaine de maisons_ (more examples here). Or indeed _Il m'a été donné un livre_ ("There was given to me a book"). The verb is passive and the active subject is suppressed, but the direct object stays put. The new syntactic subject is just a dummy pronoun, _il_.


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## Hulalessar

CapnPrep said:


> _I was taken *unfair advantage* of_, _We were opened *fire* upon_, _She was made *a complete fool* of_.



But in those cases the words in bold are the subject of the sentence and we have another construction where what precedes the verb is not the subject. "Of" and "upon" are prepositions. A preposition must govern something. English allows prepositions to go for long walks. In _I was taken unfair advantage of _"of" governs "I". The whole thing is no more than _Unfair advantage was taken of me_ back to front with "me" becoming "I" for no other reason than that it comes at the beginning.



CapnPrep said:


> _John was elected *mayor*_, _Mary was considered *a hero*_



In these cases there is an ellipsis. _John was elected [to be] mayor._



CapnPrep said:


> _Lancelot was made *a knight of the Round Table*._



It can be shown that _a knight of the Round Table _is not the object by inserting something meaning the same thing as "made": _Lancelot was *invested with the rank of* a knight of the Round Table._


----------



## Dan2

Hulalessar: I've read all your posts in this thread and am still baffled by your logic.

When "John hit Bill" is passivized to "Bill was hit by John" you accept "Bill" as the subject of the passive sentence even tho this subject is the recipient of the action, whereas in the original sentence the subject is the doer of the action.  So you accept the notion that there is a distinction (and no one-to-one correspondence) between formal grammatical concepts like subject and object and semantic concepts like doer-of-action and recipient-of-action.

But in "I was a given a book", you deny the possibility of "I" being the grammatical subject of the sentence.  Why?  Because "I" has the semantic role of "indirect object" (typically, person to whom something is given).  But we've already agreed that the passivization process creates a grammatical subject with a different semantic role from that in the original sentence.  If in some passive sentences this different semantic role can be recipient-of-action, why can it not in others be "recipient of a given object"?

In all your posts, the only answer I see to this question is,


Hulalessar said:


> In a passive sentence the patient is the subject.


But this is simply an *assertion* on your part.  I see no reason for accepting this assertion.  On the other hand, Berndf and CapnPrep present a whole host of arguments in favor of viewing "I" as subject of "I was given a book", any *one* of which carries more weight than your bare assertion.   Unless you can present similar arguments in favor of your analysis (and you certainly haven't done so to this point), we must accept the "I as subject" view.


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## CapnPrep

Hulalessar said:


> A preposition must govern something.


So what does it govern in my other examples, like _The bed was slept in_, _The charity was donated to_? You do agree that _the bed_ and _the charity_ are the subjects of those sentences, don't you? In prepositional passives, when the object of the preposition "goes for a walk", it acquires a different syntactic function (subject) and is no longer governed by the preposition.


Hulalessar said:


> It can be shown that _a knight of the Round Table _is not the object by inserting something meaning the same thing as "made": _Lancelot was *invested with the rank of* a knight of the Round Table._


By this flawed reasoning,_ beef stew _is not the direct object in _I *made* beef stew_ because I can dream up a different sentence _I *followed a recipe for*_ _beef stew _that says vaguely the same thing, and in which _beef stew_ is not a direct object.

Throughout this thread, you make the mistaken assumption that if two sentences are semantically equivalent, then the syntactic analysis of the corresponding pieces of the two sentences must also be equivalent. But the whole point of transformations/alternations like passivization is that one semantic form can correspond to several distinct syntactic realizations.


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## Hulalessar

CapnPrep said:


> Since you like French, consider impersonal passives like _Il a été publié beaucoup d'articles, Il sera détruit une centaine de maisons_ (more examples here). Or indeed _Il m'a été donné un livre_ ("There was given to me a book"). The verb is passive and the active subject is suppressed, but the direct object stays put. The new syntactic subject is just a dummy pronoun, _il_.



These examples seem to me be be cases of "double subjects" where "il" stands in for a postponed subject. _Il m'a été donné un livre _is no different from _Quelque chose m'a été donné - un livre_.


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## CapnPrep

Hulalessar said:


> These examples seem to me be be cases of "double subjects" where "il" stands in for a postponed subject. _Il m'a été donné un livre _is no different from _Quelque chose m'a été donné - un livre_.


Actually, they are very different: _Quelque chose _is referential, _il_ is non-referential. _Un livre_ is an argument of the clause in the first sentence, but outside the clause in the second. Furthermore, the impersonal passive is available for verbs with prepositional complements (_Il a été parlé d'un livre _"People talked about a book"), and for intransitive verbs (_Il a été beaucoup ri_ "People laughed a lot"). You can't say there's a postponed subject here, and you can't do the _quelque chose_ trick (*_Quelque chose a été parlé (de) — un livre, *Quelque chose à été beaucoup ri_).

Back to English, and one last argument from my side.

They did not give me anything.
*Anything was not given (to) me.
I was not given anything.
Do you agree that the passive sentence #2 is ungrammatical, or at least very awkward? That is because _anything _does not like to be the subject of a negative sentence. But then why is #3 fully grammatical, if in your view, it's just #2 with the word order switched around?


----------



## Hulalessar

I shall reply to the latest posts tomorrow, but for the moment I shall try a different tack.

Whilst we are more or less agreed that we should consider this question synchronically, I think the key lies in the history. I first raised the point in the thread which asked whether native speakers make mistakes. I cited the form "I was given a book" as an  example of a "mistake" that had become accepted as perfectly good grammar and explained how it had arisen.

There was a time when the accepted (though possibly not only) form was: "Me was given a book*". Word order then started to become more rigid with the subject of a sentence appearing at the beginning, but the form persisted. However, it came to be felt that a sentence could not begin with an object pronoun and so the form changed to "I was given a book". Without getting into a discussion about whether or not native speakers can make mistakes, there would have been a period when the new form was considered "wrong". All the time it was considered wrong the "I" must have been considered to be the indirect object just as today in the non-standard "Me and John went for a walk" "me" has to be (with John) the subject. Next came the time when "I" was considered acceptable. It cannot be the case that when that happened "I" suddenly becomes the subject because it performs exactly the same function as "me" did. In a sense the author who said that the modern form was bad grammar but good English had a point. To insist that in "I was given a book" "I" is the subject because it is a subject pronoun is no different from asserting that "me" is the object in "Me and John went for a walk" because "me" is an object pronoun.

*I use Modern English and as I do not know Old English and Middle English


----------



## CapnPrep

Hulalessar said:


> I think the key lies in the history.


The history is interesting (and it would be even more interesting with some references…), but a child learning English today does not have access to Old and Middle English, and their acquisition of English does not reproduce the diachronic development of the language. The fact is that English now has SVO order, and that is what the child learns. As you pointed out above, English does have deviations from SVO, and the child has to somehow learn those. For this to happen, the deviant word order and its communicative function must be salient. For example, subject-auxiliary inversion and _wh_-fronting in interrogative function. In contrast, I can't see how you expect a child to figure out that _I was given a book_ is an OVS structure in which the O nevertheless "behaves" like a subject in every respect and the S "behaves" like a direct object in every respect, and the function of this crazy structure is to express a passive (except that all other passives in the language are expressed with ordinary SV(O) clauses).


Hulalessar said:


> To insist that in "I was given a book" "I" is the subject because it is a subject pronoun is no different from asserting that "me" is the object in "Me and John went for a walk" because "me" is an object pronoun.


It is different, because the first conclusion is based on a multitude of arguments (many of which have been presented upthread), and not just the morphological form of the pronoun.


----------



## berndf

Hulalessar said:


> Maybe I am not using the correct terminology, but when using "form" and "function" I was not referring only to morphology but also to syntax.


Your argumentation gets increasingly strange. Now you're suggesting that syntax should *not *play the decisive role in deciding on the applicability of the *syntactic *categories _subject, object, nominative_ and _accusative_.


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## francisgranada

CapnPrep said:


> ... So what does it govern in my other examples, like _The bed was slept in_, _The charity was donated to_? ...


I think, in these constructions the prepositions (in, to) behave rather like separable prefixes in German and Hungarian that modify the meaning of the verb, as if we had *_The bed was in-slept,_ _*The charity was to-donated. 

_


> John was elected *mayor *


When cpmparing with other languages, in this case I could "feel" rather a supressed preposition and not an ellipsis, e.g. *_John was elected for mayor_. 

Indeed, in some Slavic languagages this _mayor _is in instrumental case and in Hungarian there is a special case for this. What I want to say, is that in other languages _mayor _may be neighter in accusatie nor in nominative in such constructions. Question: couldn't be this the situation also in English in the past?


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## berndf

francisgranada said:


> When cpmparing with other languages, in this case I could "feel" rather a supressed preposition and not an ellipsis, e.g. *_John was elected for mayor_.


If we look at the active form this would mean that
_The people elected him mayor
_must either be interpreted as a double-accusative or _him _as an indirect object. Both of these interpretations have their difficulties. I suggest we drop this example. It doesn't seem really important for anybody's argument in this debate and further discussion of this sentence will only lead us off-topic.


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## CapnPrep

berndf said:


> I suggest we drop this example. It doesn't seem really important for anybody's argument in this debate and further discussion of this sentence will only lead us off-topic.


Yes. English double-object verbs fall into several different classes, and _elect_ *X Z* and _give _*X Z* definitely have some major syntactic/semantic differences. But in both cases, you can passivize *X*, while *Z* remains as a direct NP complement of the passive verb, thus invalidating Hulalessar's claim that it is "in the very nature of a passive verb that it is intransitive".

Here's a more relevant example, including an indirect object in the active form:

Someone bet me 100€ (that I couldn't eat 50 eggs in one hour). 
*100€ was bet me. 
I was bet 100€. 
Again, since _I_ corresponds to the original indirect object (the potential winner/loser of the 100€), Hulalessar would say that it cannot be the subject in #3. So the subject must be _100€_, the theme/patient argument. But #2 shows that _100€ _cannot in fact appear as the subject in the passive form of #1.


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## Hulalessar

Dan2 said:


> When "John hit Bill" is passivized to "Bill was hit by John" you accept "Bill" as the subject of the passive sentence even tho this subject is the recipient of the action, whereas in the original sentence the subject is the doer of the action.  So you accept the notion that there is a distinction (and no one-to-one correspondence) between formal grammatical concepts like subject and object and semantic concepts like doer-of-action and recipient-of-action.
> 
> But in "I was a given a book", you deny the possibility of "I" being the grammatical subject of the sentence.  Why?  Because "I" has the semantic role of "indirect object" (typically, person to whom something is given).  But we've already agreed that the passivization process creates a grammatical subject with a different semantic role from that in the original sentence.  If in some passive sentences this different semantic role can be recipient-of-action, why can it not in others be "recipient of a given object"?



"Hit" is different from "give". In "Bill was hit by John" we can indeed agree that Bill was the recipient of the hitting. In "Mary was given a book" whilst Mary is the recipient of the book it is the book which gets the giving.


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## Hulalessar

CapnPrep said:


> So what does it govern in my other examples, like _The bed was slept in_, _The charity was donated to_? You do agree that _the bed_ and _the charity_ are the subjects of those sentences, don't you? In prepositional passives, when the object of the preposition "goes for a walk", it acquires a different syntactic function (subject) and is no longer governed by the preposition.



I agree with Francisgranda that the prepositions here are really part of the verb. They do not function as prepositions in the sense that they establish some relationship between words. I also have some doubt as to whether these two examples actually exhibit passives. In the first case "sleep" (and "sleep in") cannot be transitive (except in the sense of accommodate) so how can they have a passive? In the second nothing is actually being given.



CapnPrep said:


> By this flawed reasoning,_ beef stew _is not the direct object in _I *made* beef stew_ because I can dream up a different sentence _I *followed a recipe for*_ _beef stew _that says vaguely the same thing, and in which _beef stew_ is not a direct object.



No. "Make" has many different meanings. My dictionary gives the following as one: _(intransitive) to come or cause or to come into a specified state or condition. _When used in this sense "make" is a copula. It seems therefore that in _Lancelot was__ made __a knight of the Round Table_ there is in fact no passive.


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## Hulalessar

CapnPrep said:


> They did not give me anything.
> *Anything was not given (to) me.
> I was not given anything.
> Do you agree that the passive sentence #2 is ungrammatical, or at least very awkward? That is because _anything _does not like to be the subject of a negative sentence. But then why is #3 fully grammatical, if in your view, it's just #2 with the word order switched around?



But this is just a peculiarity of the word "anything".


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## Hulalessar

CapnPrep said:


> I can't see how you expect a child to figure out that _I was given a book_ is an OVS structure in which the O nevertheless "behaves" like a subject in every respect and the S "behaves" like a direct object in every respect, and the function of this crazy structure is to express a passive (except that all other passives in the language are expressed with ordinary SV(O) clauses).



But children do not have to understand it, they just use it because they hear it.


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## Hulalessar

"John sent a book to Mary" and "A book was sent to Mary by John" are semantically equivalent, but different constructions. We can say the same about "John sent a book to Mary" and "Mary was sent a book by John". However, whilst "A book was sent to Mary by John" and "Mary was sent a book by John" are semantically equivalent, the structural difference is surely more apparent than real. When converting an active sentence into the passive the word "promote" is often used. When "John sent a book" is converted to "A book was sent by John" there is no problem saying that "book" is promoted to be the subject. Equally no problem with "John sent a book to Mary" becoming "A book was sent to Mary by John." However, if converted to "Mary was sent a book by John" we surely do have a problem. All that has happened is that "Mary has been "promoted" to become the first word in the sentence. Whilst word order must be considered part of the structure of a sentence, it certainly does not follow that word order determines what is the subject of a sentence. Whilst English may quite properly be described as an SVO language, the rule that in statements the subject must precede the verb is not of universal application. We can also say that while in "Mary was sent to London" and "Mary was sent a book" "Mary was sent" appears on the surface to be operating in the same way, at a deeper level it is not because it is an undeniable fact that in one case Mary is being sent whilst in the other she is not; the information concerning who or what is being sent is different in each case.

When a sentence with a transitive verb without an indirect object is turned into a sentence with a passive verb the object becomes the subject. If when "John sent a book to Mary" is converted to "A book was sent to Mary by John" it is agreed that "book" is the subject and "Mary" the indirect object, what is the justification for insisting it is not the case when it is converted to "Mary was sent a book by John"? If we do insist we suddenly find that the indirect object has got lost and that what in any other case would be the subject is still the object.

I am the last person to insist that "traditional" grammar is right, but it seems to me that the defininitions of "transitive", "intranstive", "active" and "passive", as well as "subject" and "object" that I learned when I was twelve still hold good, at least for the English language even if capable of being refined. Whilst I am not certain I can define what a subject is I know one when I see one! If anyone is going to convince me I am wrong they need to define what they mean by "subject" and "passive".


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## CapnPrep

Hulalessar said:


> Whilst I am not certain I can define what a subject is I know one when I see one! If anyone is going to convince me I am wrong they need to define what they mean by "subject" and "passive".


It's already been said, but it might be useful to recapitulate. The subject in English _typically_:

has nominative case 
determines the agreement of the verb 
precedes the verb in ordinary declarative clauses 
does not appear directly with the infinitive 
cannot be reflexive/reciprocal 
is repeated (as a pronoun) in tag questions 
etc. 
etc. 
etc. 
You are right to point out that none of these properties, taken individually, is absolutely obligatory. But if something exhibits all of the properties, as _I_ in _I was given a book_ does, it must be the subject. And something that exhibits none of the properties, like _a book_ in the same example, cannot possibly be the subject.

As for "passive", one aspect of the definition that has been neglected up to now is the morphology of the verb. In English, a past participle that combines with the auxiliary/copula _be_ is passive (leaving aside the archaic construction with some verbs of motion _he is fallen, is risen, is come_, etc.). So all of the examples above like _was made a knight_,_ was slept in_, etc. that you don't think are passives, are in fact passives.


----------



## Dan2

Hulalessar said:


> If when "John sent a book to Mary" is converted to "A book was sent to  Mary by John" it is agreed that "book" is the subject and "Mary" the  indirect object, what is the justification for insisting it is not the  case when it is converted to "Mary was sent a book by John"? If we do  insist we suddenly find that the indirect object has got lost


How is that any worse than the _direct _object getting "lost" when converting "John sent the book" to "The book was sent by John"?


Hulalessar said:


> Whilst I am not certain I can define what a subject is I know one when I see one!


"I know one when I see one" is a common English phrase. In thinking about this thread, another very common phrase, at least in American English, kept coming to mind: "If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck and quacks like a duck... it's probably a duck."

You have has ("number" is singular...) been shown a large number of ways in which the "I" in "I was given a book" looks, walks and quacks like a subject.  I'm not being facetious here.  As I see it, when we set aside the history of language and simply ask ourselves how language is organized in the brains of contemporary native speakers, all we have to go on is the pattern of acceptability judgments they make.  And this "I" _overwhelmingly, by every test, _patterns like a subject.  That's what we have on one side of the ledger.  On the other side we have you saying, "I know a subject when I see one", without offering any evidence that that's how contemporary NS's analyze it.


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## berndf

Hulalessar said:


> However, if converted to "Mary was sent a book by John" we surely do have a problem. All that has happened is that "Mary has been "promoted" to become the first word in the sentence.


As has been noted several times here, this is precisely *not* what happens. "Mary" doesn't only get *one* property of the subject (first position) but *all* properties of a subject. Your position then effectively amounts to saying "I" in _I was given the book_ exhibits all the characteristics, morphologically ("I" rather then "me") and functionally (see #54), of a subject but it isn't. _Subject _being a formal, syntactic and not a semantic concept, your interpretation is very difficult to justify.


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## CapnPrep

berndf said:


> _Subject _being a formal, syntactic and not a semantic concept, your interpretation is very difficult to justify.


This is a crucial point, because as Hulalessar said, he is working with the definitions of a twelve-year old. In school grammar classes, we are taught things like "A noun is a person, place, or thing", "A verb is an action word", and "The subject is the noun doing the action (except in the passive, where the subject has the action done to him/her/it)". In other words, everything is defined semantically, because that's easier for children to understand. Unfortunately, it is also totally incorrect in many cases, and in all cases woefully inadequate for proper linguistic analysis.


----------



## berndf

CapnPrep said:


> This is a crucial point, because as Hulalessar said, he is working with the definitions of a twelve-year old. In school grammar classes, we are taught things like "A noun is a person, place, or thing", "A verb is an action word", and "The subject is the noun doing the action (except in the passive, where the subject has the action done to him/her/it)". In other words, everything is defined semantically, because that's easier for children to understand. Unfortunately, it is also totally incorrect in many cases, and in all cases woefully inadequate for proper linguistic analysis.


And the disagreement between _traditional _and _revised _Grammar he states does in fact not exist. The analysis of the passivized indirect object as the subject of the sentence had long been an established part of the English standard grammar when he was 12 years old. The distinction here is rather between _school _and _academic _grammar.


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## francisgranada

I think I understand Hulalessar's stand point, as he tries to find the semantic logic of the construction that we are speaking about, and then to alanylze the "result" syntactically. But in this case we have only two possibilities: 

1. We declare this construction erroneous, because it "logically" doesn't correspond to our "expectations". In this case _I_ in "I was given" is used incorrectly, hence all the costruction is wrong.

2. We admit the legitimity of this construction, simply because it is commonly used and today it forms part of the English grammar, whatever be it's origin.  In this case  _I_ in "I was given" is in nominative case and the whole construction is sintactically analyzable (according to the explanations of Berndf and CapnPrep)

Evidently the second "option" is real, because nobody denies the existence of such constructions in English. Finally, there are many "logically problematic" constructions in languages and we accept them. A simple example: _big houses_ instead of _bigs houses_ could be also cosidered illogical/erroneous from an IE point of view, but e.g. from Hungarian point of view it's the most normal construction on Earth.


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## Hulalessar

Syntax is surely about how the words in a sentence relate to each other. How is it possible to establish how words relate to each other if you do not know what they mean?

*

The following look passive but are not:

_I am called John

I was made a full member

I was elected mayor

I was declared the winner_

The verbs are copulative. Are we too call them passive because they are passive in form?

Mentioning "passive in form" reminds me of deponent verbs in Latin, usually described as verbs which are passive in form but active in meaning. If we are the follow the logic of the arguments presented against me then a verb such as "loquor" meaning "to speak" has to be declared passive. That is the morphological tail wagging the semantic dog.

*

I return to French. When translating "I was given a book" into French we are immediately forced to face the fact that we cannot produce *J'étais donné un livre", that is follow the form of the English. When translating into French we may be faced with any number of problems, but they are not usually of the kind that may make us stop and think about what is going on in English. French is different from English but is not so different that the landscape is totally unfamiliar; it does not for instance display ergative alignment. But this little problem seems to be approaching something like coping with ergative alignment. If you have not previously considered the construction "I am given a book" you are going to say to yourself: "What's going on here? I have to make what looks like the subject the indirect object. And hang on, has a passive verb got an object? I thought that wasn't allowed." It is clearly something that needs looking at. I do think that when you have looked at it that



francisgranada said:


> we have only two possibilities:
> 
> 1. We declare this construction erroneous, because it "logically" doesn't correspond to our "expectations". In this case I in "I was given" is used incorrectly, hence all the costruction is wrong.
> 
> 2. We admit the legitimity of this construction, simply because it is commonly used and today it forms part of the English grammar, whatever be it's origin. In this case I in "I was given" is in nominative case and the whole construction is sintactically analyzable (according to the explanations of Berndf and CapnPrep)



Rather I would say that the "rules" by  which Berndf and CapnPrep establish what is the subject of a sentence have been drawn up without taking the construction into account. CapnPrep gives me some ways to recognise a subject, but no help in establishing the essence of what a subject is. Perhaps that is too tricky (I hasten to add not just for CapnPrep, but for anyone.) Perhaps though he can give me what he considers are pointers for determining the subject of a passive verb.

*

Perhaps we can also look at this without considering what the subject of a sentence is and instead concentrate on the recipient. I borrow this definition from Wikipedia: "Recipient: a special kind of goal associated with verbs expressing a change in ownership, possession. (E.g., I sent *John* the letter. He gave the book *to her*.)" (It seems that John is busy sending a lot of letters in the aid of linguistic analysis!)

In

_A book was sent to Mary_

we have no difficulty establishing that Mary got the book; Mary is the recipient.

In

_Mary was sent a book_

surely there is equally no doubt in agreeing that Mary got the book; "Mary" is the recipient. If "Mary" is the recipent she must be the indirect object. If that is the case, the sentence needing a subject and no other noun being around, "book" has to be the subject.

Can we not therefore formulate a rule which goes something like this:

_In a sentence with a passive verb which indicates that there is a person or thing A moving in some sense and a person or thing B to which A is moving, then A is the subject and B is the indirect object irrespective of the position of A or B in the sentence, the form of A or B and whether the verb agrees in number or person with A._

*

As for ducks, I am inclined to think that in "I was given a book" both "I" and "book" are wolves in sheep's clothing - they look like something different to what they are until you get up close when they snap at you.


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## Dan2

Hulalessar said:


> In
> 
> _Mary was sent a book_
> 
> surely there is equally no doubt in agreeing that Mary got the book; "Mary" is the recipient. If "Mary" is the recipent she must be the indirect object.


And in your sentence, "Mary got the book" there is _certainly _no doubt that Mary got the book; that Mary is the recipient.  By your reasoning, "Mary" must thus be the grammatical indirect object of "Mary got the book". Right?


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## CapnPrep

Hulalessar said:


> The following look passive but are not:


Yes, they are. Every single one of your examples.





Hulalessar said:


> The verbs are copulative and/or factitive. Are we too call them passive because they are passive in form?


Yes, we are. The NP complements in these examples may be considered predicative (i.e., having the same function as the NP in copular structures like _I am a full member_, _I became mayor_, etc.), but the verbs themselves (_was made_, _was elected_, _am called_) are passive, not copular.


Hulalessar said:


> And hang on, has a passive verb got an object? I thought that wasn't allowed.


Yes, you thought that wasn't allowed. The upshot of this thread is that you might want to consider updating your thinking. Passive verbs can have objects!  A _prototypical_ passive does not have an object, because prototypically, you start with a two-place active predicate (subject + direct object) and turn it into a one-place passive predicate (subject only, corresponding to the original direct object). But there are non-prototypical passives, like the one in this thread, that do not match this description, that are nevertheless passives. Just like penguins and ostriches and kiwis are birds, even though they are not the first thing you think of when you imagine a "bird".    


Hulalessar said:


> Perhaps though he can give me what he considers are pointers for determining the subject of a passive verb.


Exactly the same tests/criteria/properties as I gave above. They work for active and passive sentences, because they refer only to morpho-syntactic properties, not to semantic roles.


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## Hulalessar

CapnPrep said:


> Here's a more relevant example, including an indirect object in the active form:
> 
> Someone bet me 100€ (that I couldn't eat 50 eggs in one hour).
> *100€ was bet me.
> I was bet 100€.
> Again, since _I_ corresponds to the original indirect object (the potential winner/loser of the 100€), Hulalessar would say that it cannot be the subject in #3. So the subject must be _100€_, the theme/patient argument. But #2 shows that _100€ _cannot in fact appear as the subject in the passive form of #1.



That had me bamboozled for a good while! The answer came when I looked up "bet". What is happening here is that "bet" is being used in two senses at once: (a) _to lay a bet_ and (b) _to have a bet with_. The two sentences:

A._ Someone bet me_ (= someone had a bet with me)

and

B. _Someone bet 100€_ (= someone laid a bet of 100€)

have been telescoped. 

In _Someone bet me 100€ _"me" is not an indirect object, as A shows. _*100€ was bet me_ just shows that in some sentences the two different meanings cannot be telescoped.


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## Hulalessar

In post number 60 I got over-excited. What I should have said was:

In the following the verbs may be passive but they do not have an object:

_I am called John

I was made a full member

I was elected mayor

I was declared the winner

_The verbs are copulative and what follows them is not an object but a subject complement.

*

I am always prepared to update my thinking, but none of the examples I have been given purporting to show that a passive verb can take an object convince me. Either there is no passive, just a construction that looks passive, or the verb is a copula.


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## berndf

Hulalessar said:


> If "Mary" is the recipent she must be the indirect object.


Why? The indirect object often denotes the recipient. But you cannot deduce from that that the recipient must be referred to by an indirect object. Dan gave you an example (_Mary got the book_) where Mary is the recipient *of the book* and undeniably also the subject *of the sentence*. You are confusing _referent_ and _reference_.

Let me give you an extra-linguistic example of show the logical fallacy of your seasoning. Suppose we know the following facts:
_Trains are often used by people to travel.
John is currently travelling.
_You can *not *deduce from these two facts that John is currently on a train.


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## Hulalessar

This discussion has been very interesting but I think it has gone just about as far as it can go. Thanks to all those who took part and took the time and trouble to put their position.

I still remain unconvinced and in the end I think it comes down to how you approach the question and what should be allowed to be taken into account.

I think it comes down to something like this: you can define a snake as a reptile with a cylindrical limbless body and all snakes fit the definition. However, not all reptiles with a cylindrical limbless body are snakes, e.g. slow worms which are legless lizards. What I am saying is that in "I was given a book" "I" and "book" are not snakes but legless lizards. My idea of what a subject and an indirect object are allow me to analyse "I" as the indirect object" and "book" as the subject.


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## berndf

Hulalessar said:


> I think it comes down to something like this: you can define a snake as a reptile with a cylindrical limbless body and all snakes fit the definition. However, not all reptiles with a cylindrical limbless body are snakes, e.g. slow worms which are legless lizards. What I am saying is that in "I was given a book" "I" and "book" are not snakes but legless lizards. My idea of what a subject and an indirect object are allow me to analyse "I" as the indirect object" and "book" as the subject.


No, that is the wrong comparison. Lizards and snakes are both animals and a cylinder is a shape. Subjects and recipients are on different category levels. You are confusing shapes and animals. In your analogy, a recipient is an animal while subjects and objects are shapes. In John gave him the book, the _recipient _is depicted in the shape of a cube and in _I was given the book_ in the shape of a sphere.


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## LilianaB

Hulalessar said:


> This discussion has been very interesting but I think it has gone just about as far as it can go. Thanks to all those who took part and took the time and trouble to put their position.
> 
> I still remain unconvinced and in the end I think it comes down to how you approach the question and what should be allowed to be taken into account.
> 
> I think it comes down to something like this: you can define a snake as a reptile with a cylindrical limbless body and all snakes fit the definition. However, not all reptiles with a cylindrical limbless body are snakes, e.g. slow worms which are legless lizards. What I am saying is that in "I was given a book" "I" and "book" are not snakes but legless lizards. My idea of what a subject and an indirect object are allow me to analyse "I" as the indirect object" and "book" as the subject.



Subjects and objects are syntactic categories. From a semantical point of view _a third party_ is really the one performing the action -- _the_ _unknown giver_ is the agent; _the_ _book_ is the patient; and _I_ functions as the recipient (sometimes called receiver), in the passive sentence. From a syntactic point of view _I_ is the subject in the passive sentence.


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## Dan2

Hulalessar said:


> I think it comes down to something like this: you can define a snake as a reptile with a cylindrical limbless body and all snakes fit the definition...


Being a better mathematician (not good but better) than biologist, I would suggest the following analogy for the logic of this thread:

It is indeed possible to say, "I know an even number when I see one, and 13 is an even number", and then offer a new definition of "even number" that includes all the traditional even numbers, plus 13.

The problem with this definition is this: Under the traditional definition of "even number", there are a whole host of interesting properties that this set obeys.  Under your new definition, you find yourself constantly adding counter-intuitive exceptions.  For ex.,
"The difference of any two even integers e1, e2 is another even integer"
becomes, under your definition
"The difference of any two even integers e1, e2 is another even integer, unless either e1 or e2 (but not both e1 and e2) is 13".

Having to add this kind of exception to every interesting statement about even numbers strongly suggests that your definition (while allowable in principle) is arbitrary, uninteresting, and doesn't, as the traditional definition does, capture an important generalization in mathematics.

Similarly, you are free to define "subject", "direct object" and "indirect object" in the way you've indicated, but if you do then for every one of the many interesting properties of "subjects" that have been enumerated by Berndf and CapnPrep, you'll find yourself having to add, "except in the case of sentences like 'I was given a book'".  This is as unacceptable to those interested in a scientific approach to language as the 13-as-even-number definition is to the mathematician.

EDIT: The point I make above can be strengthened even further:
If we accept your analysis of sentences like "I was given a book", not only must every interesting statement about _subjects_ have the counter-intuitive exception mentioned above, but the same is true of statements about direct objects and indirect objects.  Furthermore, _in all three cases,_ it is exactly the same sentence type ("I was given a book") that provides the exception.  In any science, this would be taken as overwhelming evidence that the analysis in question is "wrong".


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