Grammar: Passive Structures

Passive Structures

FUNCTIONS OF THE PASSIVE VOICE

The passive voice is used to show interest in the person or object that experiences an action rather than the person or object that performs the action. In other words, the most important thing or person becomes the subject of the sentence.

EXAMPLES

• The passive voice is used frequently. (= we are interested in the passive voice, not in who uses it.)
• The house was built in 1654. (= we are interested in the house, not in who built it.)
• The road is being repaired. (= we are interested in the road, not in the people who are doing the repairs.)

Sometimes we use the passive voice because we don't know or do not want to express who performed the action.

EXAMPLES

• I noticed that a window had been left open.
• Every year thousands of people are killed on our roads.
• All the cookies have been eaten.
• My car has been stolen!

The passive voice is often used in formal texts. Switching to the active voice will make your writing clearer and easier to read.

Grammar: Reflexive verbs

REFLEXIVE VERBS

Reflexive verbs are notional/link verbs with their activity doer/agent and recipient/patient/addressee being the same and expressed by subjects and direct objects correspondingly. 

We use a reflexive pronoun after a transitive verb when the direct object is the same as the subject of the verb. E.g: He blamed himself for the accident.

Some verbs change their meaning slightly when they have a reflexive pronoun as direct object: amuse, apply, busy, content, behave, blame, distance, express, find, help, see.

Reciprocal Reflexives

Reciprocal reflexives denote mutual doer/addressee activity. They are mostly transitive. E.g: She and I kissed [each other].

Autocausatives

Autocausative reflexives denote animate doer passivity. E.g: She got depressed.

Anticausatives

Anticausative reflexives denote inanimate subject passivity. E.g: The door (was/got) opened.

Impersonals/Mediopassives

Impersonal/mediopassive reflexives are intransitive verbs with doers implied. E.g:[They] relax well here. It’s thought that…

Proper Reflexives

Proper/inherent reflexives lack corresponding non-reflexives from which they can be synchronically derived. These are pure intransitive reflexive verbs. Eg:They laugh.

Exercises

Grammar: Participle Clauses

1. Participle clauses.

A participle clause is a dependent clause which uses a participle form of a verb. These clauses are used to avoid making sentences overly complicated. They are used mainly in written English and they allow us to convey a great deal of information in a shorter form. Participle clauses don’t have a subject because their subject is the noun/pronoun in the main clause.

Getting into the lift, I realised I had forgotten my keys. 
 (participle clause)                 (main clause)

2. Types of participle clauses.

• Condition (in place of an if-condition):
  Looked after carefully, this coat will keep you warm through many winters.
• Reason (in place of words like so or therefore):
  Wanting to speak to him about the contract, I decided to arrange a meeting.
• Result (in place of words like because or as a result):
  I had no time to read my book, having spent so long doing my homework.
• Time (in place of words like when, while or as soon as):
  Sitting at the cafe with my friends, I suddenly realised that I had left the oven on at home.

Grammar: Conditionals

Zero conditional:

The zero conditional is used to make statements about the real world, and often refers to general truths, such as scientific facts. In these sentences, the time is now or always and the situation is real and possible.

We can make a zero conditional sentence with two present simple verbs [If + present simple, .... present simple].

Examples:

- If water reaches 100 degrees, it boils. (It is always true, there can't be a different result sometimes).

- If I eat peanuts, I am sick. (This is true only for me, maybe, not for everyone, but it's still true that I'm sick every time I eat peanuts).

- Ice melts if you heat it.

Grammar: Reported Speech

1.Reported Speech

The first thing we need to know about Reported Speech is that we use a 'reporting verb' like 'say' or 'tell'. If this verb is in the present tense, it's easy. We just put 'she says' and then the sentence:  

• Direct speech: “I like ice cream”.
• Reported speech: She says (that) she likes ice cream.

But, if the reporting verb is in the past tense, then usually we change the tenses in the reported speech:

• Direct speech: “I like ice cream”.
• Reported speech: She said (that) she liked ice cream.

Here you can check the different changes that take place in the sentence depending on the original tense: 

Sometimes when we change direct speech into reported speech we have to change time expressions too. We don't always have to do this, however. It depends on when we heard the direct speech and when we say the reported speech. For example:
It's Monday. Julie says "I'm leaving today".
If I tell someone on Monday, I say "Julie said she was leaving today".
If I tell someone on Tuesday, I say "Julie said she was leaving yesterday".
If I tell someone on Wednesday, I say "Julie said she was leaving on Monday".
If I tell someone a month later, I say "Julie said she was leaving that day".

2.Reported Questions

How can we make the reported speech here?  "Where do you live"?
In fact, it's not so different from reported statements. The tense changes are the same, and we keep the question word. The very important thing though is that, once we tell the question to someone else, it isn't a question any more. So we need to change the grammar to a normal positive sentence. A bit confusing? Maybe this example will help:

• Direct speech: "Who are you?"
• Reported speech: She asked me who I was.

  The direct question is in the present simple tense. We make a present simple question with 'do' or 'does' so I need to take that away. Then I need to change the verb to the past simple. 

 But, what if you need to report a 'yes / no' question? We don't have any question words to help us. Instead, we use 'if':

• Direct speech: "Do you like chocolate?"
• Reported speech: She asked me if I liked chocolate.

3.Reported Requests

What if someone asks you to do something (in a polite way)? For example:

• Direct speech: "Close the window, please"
• Or: "Could you close the window please?"
• Or: "Would you mind closing the window please?"

All of these requests mean the same thing, so we don't need to report every word when we tell another person about it. We simply use 'ask me + to + infinitive':

• Reported speech: She asked me to close the window.

4.Reported Orders

When someone tells you very directly to do something, We can say this is an 'order' in English. In fact, we make this into reported speech in the same way as a request. We just use 'tell' instead of 'ask':

• Direct speech: "Sit down!"
•  Reported speech: She told me to sit dow.

Reported Speech 1
Reported Speech 2

5.Excercises about Reported Speech:

Grammar: Gerunds and infinitives

A gerund is the present participle (-ing) form of the verb. An infinitive is to + the base verb (the verb with no ending). Both gerunds and infinitives are action words (i.e., verbs) in meaning, but they act like nouns in the sentence. They always take a noun position: a subject or an object of the main verb.

GERUNDS:

A gerund is a verb in its -ing (present participle) from that functions as a noun that names an activity rather than a person or thing. Any action verb can be made into a gerund.

Spelling Tips:

1. - Adding -ing to most infinitives. Ex: Play-playing; do-doing.
2. - For verbs that end in -e remove the -e and add -ing. Ex: slide-sliding; ride-riding.
3. - For verbs that end in ie, change the ie to y and add ing. Ex: die -dying, tie -tying
4. - For a verb whose last syllable is written with a consonant-vowel-consonant and is stressed, double the last letter before adding ing. Ex: beg -begging, begin -beginning. However: enter -entering.