Monday, October 1, 2012

Convert active to passive



Need help converting this sentence to passive voice:-




The students will assemble in the hall.





I think it should be:-



The hall will be assembled by the students.


But it sounds like students are building the hall by putting together some pieces.



Should I change it to assembled in by the students? Or something else?


Answer



I in comments wrote to John Lawler:





What, you don’t like “The stu­dents will go down­town for lunch” be­com­ing “Down­town will be gone to by the stu­dents for lunch” much, eh? :-) Be­cause such abom­i­na­tions do crop up from not-na­tive speak­ers from time to time, I sus­pect no­body ever let them in on the joke in the first place.




And then to the asker:




You can't ever do pas­sive in­ver­sion on in­tran­si­tive verbs, in­clud­ing both yours and mine. If what I wrote sounds right to you, some­body has trained you wrong be­cause it’s com­pletely un­gram­mat­i­cal in English. You must have a ­tran­si­tive verb with a di­rect ob­ject to use pas­sive in­ver­sion on so that you can in­vert sub­ject and ob­ject. In­tran­si­tive verbs lack an ob­ject to use for the sub­ject.




Also, home­work is a mass noun not a count noun, so you can never say *a home­work.



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