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The Passive in English (2011)

languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu

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Re: The Passive in English (2011)

#51

Post by ordu »

mrkeen wrote: post #29
coliveira wrote: post #9

I aways took the aversion of English speakers against the passive voice as a sign of linguistic incompetence. Instead of teaching students how to write well on the passive and active voices, they prefer to reduce the language to its minimum denominator. The confirmation is in [1]: many journalists and writers don't even know how to define the passive. It is a sad thing to watch. [1] http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/p…

In fiction, the active voice is usually clearer and flows better. In non-fiction (especially journalism) it's frustrating when it's used to hide who did the action. ..or.. In non-fiction (especially journalism) it's frustrating when the writer uses it to hide who did the action.

"It's used" clearer indicates what is frustrating than "the writer uses", isn't it? It doesn't matter who uses this technique, it may be the writer, or the editor, or the censor, or whoever, it will be frustrating in any case.

To get this clarity with active voice we need to replace "the writer" with a pronoun, like "someone" or "anyone", but it is just ugly.

So to my mind there is no silver bullet, no simple ways to do it right in all cases. It depends.

Re: The Passive in English (2011)

#52

Post by dghf »

mrkeen wrote: post #30

In Latin, deponent verbs are verbs which are written in the passive form but have an active meaning. The textbook I used said there are no deponent verbs in English. But it got me thinking, it must all be relative. Can native speakers of a language even think they have deponent verbs without having another language to compare to? English has "to be born". You could argue that it's passive (the active is "to bear"), b…

> The textbook I used said there are no deponent verbs in English.

Some regional dialects of British English allow the use of “stood” for “standing”. E.g., “he is stood over there” = “he is standing over there”.

Likewise for “sit”: “we were sat by the bar” = “we were sitting by the bar”.

I don’t know if those technically count as deponent verbs, but they look a bit like them.

Re: The Passive in English (2011)

#53

Post by pjc50 »

andrewshadura wrote: post #43
mrkeen wrote: post #30

In Latin, deponent verbs are verbs which are written in the passive form but have an active meaning. The textbook I used said there are no deponent verbs in English. But it got me thinking, it must all be relative. Can native speakers of a language even think they have deponent verbs without having another language to compare to? English has "to be born". You could argue that it's passive (the active is "to bear"), b…

> English has "to be born". You could argue that it's passive (the active is "to bear"), but it's not how the word is used. Can you please explain? I don't see this verb being used in active voice almost at all.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/borne-vs-born-... - it's rather complicated.

Re: The Passive in English (2011)

#54

Post by pjc50 »

tkgally wrote: post #2

I enjoyed this rant at the end of the article: “[T]he people who criticize the passive the most tend to use it more than the rest of us. George Orwell warns against the passive in his dishonest and rhetorically overblown essay "Politics and the English language". E. B. White does likewise in the obnoxiously ignorant little book by Strunk that he revised and put his name on, The Elements of Style. Both of these author…

The lesson in "Politics and the English language" is about the use of the passive voice to obscure responsibility. The canonical example from current discourse is "officer-involved shooting"; incidents involving police often engage in strange linguistic contortions to avoid assigning responsibility to the obvious person.

https://fair.org/home/copspeak-7-ways-journalists-use-police...

Re: The Passive in English (2011)

#55

Post by msla »

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #17
msla wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really points up the difference between linguists, who understand language, and grammarians, who merely peeve about it.

There is a difference between understanding linguistics and understanding language. Many linguists who carry the banner of descriptivism completely fail to do the latter. It’s one thing to understand that wearing dark formal attire to a funeral is just a part of etiquette without intrinsic meaning; it’s a whole nother matter to come to a funeral in a Hawaiian shirt and dismiss all criticism as judgmental.

Linguists are descriptive for the same reason physicists are: You can't understand something if you come into it with preconceived ideas about how it ought to behave. More to the point:

> It’s one thing to understand that wearing dark formal attire to a funeral is just a part of etiquette without intrinsic meaning; it’s a whole nother matter to come to a funeral in a Hawaiian shirt and dismiss all criticism as judgmental.

In this analogy, linguists are the ones who try to figure out why people like you tend to wear dark clothes to a funeral, why other groups do not, and how those distinctions occurred. Peevers are the ones who insist that all good people wear dark clothes to funerals, ill-bred mongrels wear other kinds of clothing to funerals, and resist any notion that their culture is not universal.

Moving back to linguistics: Linguists understand people have linguistic preferences. Linguists have linguistic preferences. Linguists are opposed to people dressing up their preferences as laws of nature and insisting that everyone must speak according to those preferences. Going back to physics: A physicist may wish for perpetual motion, but a crank insists they have it and demands everyone hail them as the inventor of the perpetual motion device.

Re: The Passive in English (2011)

#56

Post by andrewshadura »

bradrn wrote: post #47
andrewshadura wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> English has "to be born". You could argue that it's passive (the active is "to bear"), but it's not how the word is used. Can you please explain? I don't see this verb being used in active voice almost at all.

It’s somewhat archaic, but you do see people ‘bearing a child’ on occasion.

Yes, but in most common usage it's in passive voice, but the comment I'm replying to suggests otherwise.

Re: The Passive in English (2011)

#58

Post by thenoblesunfish »

I think it is good advice to avoid passives, if you have no particular reason to use them, purely because they're usually longer and shorter and equally clear is better, usually. It's also a good idea to be more explicit, usually, and passives allow you to leave out information but don't have to, so I mostly agree with the pushback against the passive for that reason.

Re: The Passive in English (2011)

#60

Post by mrkeen »

andrewshadura wrote: post #43
mrkeen wrote: post #30

In Latin, deponent verbs are verbs which are written in the passive form but have an active meaning. The textbook I used said there are no deponent verbs in English. But it got me thinking, it must all be relative. Can native speakers of a language even think they have deponent verbs without having another language to compare to? English has "to be born". You could argue that it's passive (the active is "to bear"), b…

> English has "to be born". You could argue that it's passive (the active is "to bear"), but it's not how the word is used. Can you please explain? I don't see this verb being used in active voice almost at all.

> I don't see this verb being used in active voice

Yes, passive voice, but active meaning. Which was why I was suggesting it was deponent.

"He was born; he lived; he died" If it were active voice: "His mother bore him".

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