On Grammar, Punctuation, & Usage

Welcome. This topic was created for the purpose of aiding writers with grammar, punctuation, usage, and whatever else they may need, and will essentially be a relatively thorough explanation of grammar. If something is not understood, ask. I or someone else will get onto it whenever we can.

4d. (supplementary to 4b. and 4c.) Relative Adverbs & Relative Determiners
Both adjectival and nominal clauses can use what are called relative adverbs, which are adverbs that function as either a noun or an adjective, and relative determiners, which acts as a determiner within a subordinate clause. Relative adverbs are why, how, where, when, however, wherever, whenever, etc., and relative determiners are which, whichever, what, and whatever (source.

(Note: not all relative adverbs can function as heads of nominal clauses (e.g., when) and vice versa)

This can be confusing as these are three word classes where one is acting as one of the other two. To try it make it simple, the relative adverb, like the relative pronoun, functions in the subordinate clause (internally) as an adverb but in the main/matrix clause as a noun or adjective.

Nominal/relative clauses in italics and relative adverb in bold.

[1] He knew why I hated him. (relative adverb as head of nominal clause functioning as object)
[2] How they achieved it, I do not know. (as object, but fronted to the beginning of the sentence)
[3] That is the place where they will rest for eternity. (as relative clause, functioning adjectively)
[4] This will be the moment when he shines. (relative adv. functioning as an adj. clause)
[5] I want it done however I want it done. (relative adv. in nominal clause functioning as an adverb)
[6] wherever you are, I will find you. (as adverb)
[7] “Go whenever you wish.” (as adverb, again)

There is not much information on the web or my go-to grammar book about relative determiners. On this Wikipedia page, I found an archaic/outdated use:

[8] He acquired two dogs and three cats, which animals were then... (relative determiner as adjective)
[9] I'll take whatever money they've got (as noun functioning as object)

and on this English Language Learners’ Stackexchange question, I found this:

[9] Sometimes you may feel too frail to cope with things, in which case do them as soon as it is convenient.
[10] I was told my work was unsatisfactory, at which point I submitted my resignation.



4e. Complement Clauses
Furthermore, there is a special class of clause that intersects the functions of adjectival, nominal, and adverbial clauses. Why I group them before covering adverbial clauses is that they bear more similarities with nominal and relative (adjectival) clauses than adverbial ones.

Onto the definition, although one type of definition (below) of a complement clause completely subsumes the functions of nominal clauses, I have restricted their role to the complementation, either modification or apposition (?), of a noun or adjective only and not to a verb. The subordinate conjunctions that head the clauses are called complementizers.



Emphasis isn’t mine, and here is the source

My view is this:

1) Structure (note: I’m using the most frequent [and only] structures I know for the clause):

Noun (subject) + complementizer + noun + verb (+complement, i.e., object, subject complem
ent, etc.) + verb (+ complement)

Subject + verb (typically a form of be) + adjective + complementizer + noun + verb (+ complement)

2) There is no “gap” for the complementizer to fill: relative pronouns, relative adverbs, and relative determiners function in two clauses: the main, in this scenario, referred to as a matrix clause, and the subordinate clause, referred to as an embedded clause. In each, they have different roles; in the matrix, they are subordinate conjunctions connecting a word with a subordinate clause whereas in the embedded, they function in whatever role that particular clause necessitates, but in a complement clause, that role is filled.

3) They function like modifiers (adverbs, adjectives, appositives [?])

The most frequent complementizer is that, which is practically ubiquitous as a head of a complement clause; this allows for a very unique test, if which is substituted which for that, although it could work for a number of relative adverbs, in a complement clause the result will be jarring.


[quote][quote]

Emphasis not mine; source, ibid


[1] why
[2] that




[b]4f. The Adverbial Clause
4g. Sentence Types
4g.i. By Structure
4g.ii. By Function

Hey thanks for posting this. There's probably not gonna be much discussion in this thread but I'm sure many users will find that it's a helpful resource.

UPDATE: Further elaboration on stative vs. copular verbs is up. I realized that not all copular verbs are stative verbs and that not all stative verbs are intransitive. I made a gaffe, but fixed now.

UPDATE 2: Even further elaboration on stative and dynamic qualities of verbs.



No problem.

I haven't taken the time yet to say great topic, thanks for going out of the way to make it. So, great topic. Thanks for going out of the way to make it.

I have a question.

I typed this sentence into Word: Should have went with the dagger.

According to Word, "went" should actually be "gone." You seem like you know a lot about grammar. Is Word right? If so, why, because I have no idea.

Okay, so to begin, go is an irregular verb (its conjugations are different depending on the tense). The conjugation of go is as follows:

Infinitive: (to) go
Present tense: go, goes (for 3rd person)
Past tense: went
Past participle: gone

The past participle is used in constructions with have, had, will have, and the passive. The first three constructions signify the perfective aspect (also called perfect tense), which I will cover more thoroughly in "More Stuff on Verbs".

The reason why the past tense of go is so dissimilar is that there were two Anglo-Saxon words similar in meaning (one go and the other wend). Wend should have had the past tense "went", but it packed it's bags and stomped out whatever the original past of go was; thus, wend took on regular verb status with wended (past and past participle).

Thanks. I've never ever heard of the word wend before.

This thread has been stickied on the grounds that it contains incredibly useful information to those interested in improving their education on grammar, punctuation, and usage of the English language.

Thank Tegumi for that.

Best of luck in completing the rest of your guide for our benefit.

Yeah, I've unfortunately been dormant on this. I do plan on getting cranking on this by hopefully next week. I have one thing I wish to do and then I should be chugging out posts more frequently.

But I sincerely apologize for the dormancy.

I also need to finish up with mibuchiha...

Just commenting to let you know that what you have is quite helpful already. Glad that you are still working on it.

Looking forward to Agreement and Placement of Modifiers in particular!

Once you started talking about intransitive and transitive verbs, my mind stopped working and I didn't understand a thing. Ever since fifth grade I couldn't do the most basic of grammar lessons. I had switched a grammar course in high because I couldn't complete it.

This lil' beaut helped me just a bit on the non grammar parts, but could help you add things on the list. Good luck and try to make is simple enough for a pleb like me to understand.

http://www.edtgestion.hec.ulg.ac.be/upload/strunk%20%20white%20-%201979%20-%20elements%20of%20style.pdf

Also







My brain started working again at that very moment.

Cheers.

I appreciate your response. Thank you.



What exactly confused you? I would like to help. And is there anything else that confused you?



I've heard about Strunk and White, but they themselves made mistakes on points of grammar, although others have as well, and have ultimately, but likely unintentionally, spread misinformation.



Thanks for noticing that. Fixed.

I'm going to ask that those who have been reading this grammar guide to refrain until I can redo Chapter 1 (and review things in the other chapters). I've already begun edits and will be adding determiner to the list of word classes (originally parts of speech. I'm sorry for any inconvenience. I'll make another post once I've finished doing all of it. Thank you.

I have a question for Mr. Logophile here, in regards to writing passive sentences.

If anyone has used Word's spell check, at least with version 2007 or later, it reports readability statistics back to you. Here is my readability statistics for Panjia, my submission for the 2014 summer writing contest:



So, as you can see, it reports that I wrote passive sentences for about 7% of the entry. This is interesting to me, because I was critiqued by a university professor for writing too passively in an experimental APA research paper in the past. I was writing in this manner unconsciously, likely the result of an artistic intuition.

Now, I understand a very basic difference between writing actively and passively, but do you think you could write a section or explain the difference between the two and perhaps note on why Word or academic institutions would point out passive writing and perhaps frown upon its use?

Thank you.

I'm sorry I haven't responded. I investigated your document (because machines are faulty) for passive sentences and encountered a sentence I was unsure about, so I posted a question asking about it. This was what's been delaying my explanation.

No apologies necessary, but thank you for looking into it. I suppose the accuracy of an automatic check means less to me than the answer and explanation. I was merely using it then as an example to point out so we were aware of what I was referencing.

I didn't know about the readability statistics myself, but the passive I do. I saw something that was unfamiliar to me (in the context of the passive), but it's resolved now—it wasn't the passive, although I suspected it to be.

Okay, when we're talking about whether a sentence is passive or active, we are talking about the voice of the sentence. This term is unrelated to authorial voice; it's simply grammatical jargon. Voice affects the verb.

I suck at defining things satisfactorily, but the active voice occurs when the subject is not being acted upon by something. So okay, but what does "not being acted upon..." mean? Let's take examples because they're better illustrators (subject in bold, verb in italics):

[1] A boy ran to a bookstore.
[2] He is John.
[3] The knight slew a dragon.
[4] Sally's boyfriend gave her a book.
[5] She made him kill that man.

Now, in these examples nothing is being done to the subject by something else. Getting into the nitty-gritty grammatical jargon, [1] has an intransitive verb, which can't take the passive; [2] has a copular verb, which also can't take a passive. [3] is a monotransitive verb, which can take the passive; likewise, [4] is a ditransitive verb, which also can take the passive (note a transitive verb is a verb that takes an object; many verbs can be either transitive or intransitive). [5] is complex transitive verb, meaning it takes an object and an object complement.

Essentially, on the question, "can this type of verb take a passive?":
Intransitive: No
Copular: No
(Mono-/Di-/Complex) transitive: Yes

Additionally, the examples illustrate the dynamic {1, 3-5}/static {2} verb divide which is the monkey wrench in defining the active voice because a subject doesn't have to be acting to be active and can be acted upon by the verb as well. For example,

[6] The car blew up.

Something is happening to the subject, sure; the verb is stating what's happening to the subject, but is as active as my early morning runs.

"We" (honestly didn't want to use this word) can conclude that there is a requisite for the passive to (come into) exist(ence): it needs to have at least one object. Why is that?

I guess the best way to truly qualify the voice divide is to show the thesis and antithesis side by side (A=Active, P=Passive):

[7A] Sam punched Ed.
[7P] Ed was punched by Sam.
[8A] Billy kicked the ball.
[8P] The ball got kicked by Billy.
[9A] Joe dropped the ball.
[9P] The ball was dropped by Joe.
[4A] Sally's boyfriend gave her a book.
[4P1] Sally was given a book by her boyfriend.
[4P2] A book was given to Sally by her boyfriend.
[5A] She made him kill that man.
[5P] He was made to kill that man by her.

What can be gathered from those examples, well, the passive versions turns the object into the subject and turns the subject into an object of a preposition, called in this case an agential by-phrase, which is a completely optional element. [4] has two passive sentences because it has two objects and can choose which to make a subject of the passive sentence. This ties back into that whole transitive verb thing—if you don't have an object, it can't be turned into a subject of a passive sentence. Usually, the by-phrase and an [auxiliary verb + a past participle] (<-a verb phrase) together are good indicators of the passive voice.

Back to the optionality of the by-phrase and the past participle. Past participles can also act as adjectives as well, so when the by-phrase is omitted, it can be particularly nebulous as to whether the there's an adjective modifying the subject or passive verb phrase:

[10?] The house was haunted.

This is ambiguous. Something could be haunting it, or it could just be a predicate adjective defining the houses's state. It's best to say could be a passive verb or an adjective, although sometimes it can be plain as to which it could be. Altered from here.

Even further still is that past participial phrases are inherently passive (because most of them can be expanded into a relative clause with passive verb phrase) but perform adjectival roles:

[11] The storm summoned in rage wreaked havoc.
[11a] The storm that was summoned in rage wreaked havoc.

Although there is no by-phrase, I wouldn't consider summoned to be an adjective here. I created a similar sentence to [11a] in my word and it says that it is passive, despite the sentence's verb (predicate) is active just because there's a passive relative clause. I would say the relative clause is in the passive voice, but the sentence as a whole is in the active.

Next, a present participial phrase can also be passive:

[12] The newspapers being torn apart are an act of protest.
[13] False information being spread is detrimental to people.

Now, I've recently learned of something called the concealed passive which uses the present participle passively. But I'm not getting into, and based on /my intuition/, it is rare, but I'm unable to substantiate that.

Like all other verbals, the infinitive too can take a passive form"

[14] He wanted /to be left/ alone by his parents.
[15] They desired /to be married/ on the twentieth.

Next on this never-ending ride, a verb in the progressive aspect (it's almost identical to a present participle) is not necessarily passive:

[16] He was running.
[17] They were riding their bicycles.
[18] We were pulverizing those little shits.

But they can become passive as well, if they're transitive:

[16P] None. No passive.
[17P] The bicycles were being ridden (by them).
[18P] Those little shits were being pulverized (by us).

I think that handles the bulk of the passive and active voices. If you are confused about some things, you can ask me. If you don't know what some of the terms mean, I suggest reading Chapter 2 for objects, subject, etc.; Chapter 3c.i.ff, Chapter 4b, because that's where you'll get immediate answers. If those are unacceptable/unsatisfactory, just ask.

Just the other day I was wondering what became of your investigation.

Wonderful, thank you for shedding light on the topic. I think it makes a lot of sense and clarifies the differences between active and passive sentences in general.

However, my earlier question remains: is the use of passive voice frowned upon or viewed as improper? Would you consider there to be a useful purpose to passive voice, or is it merely optional, to be used at the whim of the writer? Is consistency in the use of active and passive voice important?

Thank you for your attention to this interesting topic within grammar.

If I didn't mention it already, I did get an answer. My suspicion was wrong. I learned some new things. And I finally decided to purchase (at some point) another linguistics book, one that I was deliberating on, because of it.



Yes, it is frowned upon, but it sort of depends on whom you ask. Ask a prescriptivist; he might say, "don't use it (ever)"; ask a descriptivist, he will most likely say, "there's no problem with it". And technically, the descriptivist is right, but the prescription against the passive voice isn't too unfounded. People can use them to protect them from taking responsibility (though the active voice can do that too). Ironically enough, the people who vehemently prescribe against its use are often the ones who use it most or don't even know what the passive is, e.g., Strunk & White in Elements of Style, Orwell in Politics and the English Language, etc. If you want more examples of misuse/overuse, you can likely find them on Language Log because they have a shit ton of articles on the topic.

Academia, esp. English Comp., will likely disapprove of it. So the default position is write actively.

For the useful purposes, I have/had to consult my grammar book for the specifics because I know there's a few but don't know the details. It states that it is used when a) the agent is unknown or b) to hide the identity of who did the action. To add to it, the passive also emphasizes the object of the active voice because it's now the subject. Finally, there might be an additional use in verse, so that the meter works.

On consistency, the only thing I can think of is if the passive voice is used in a section that really needs an active. An example might be a fight scene. The flow of the passage would be disrupted. Using it around active sentences is fine only if doesn't grate. And finally, you can use it on whim if it helps your work. I wonder if there has been book written only in the passive, as a sneer to prescriptivists.



You're welcome; always(~) here to help.

Well, I hope my query about it will help you in furthering your education about the topic. It's something that isn't covered often enough in literature courses, but maintains a strong yet subtle presence in the background.



Interesting, I will have to try and pay special attention to my use of either, as I often write in a manner befitting my artistic instinct and rarely so articulately.

I might consider myself more of a descriptivist than a prescriptivist, but I understand the importance of maintaining a knowledge of the standard rules of literature, so I would respect the position a prescriptivist might make in honor of the foundation of the English language.



Yes, I can certainly see its use in those given situations. I think I might have unconsciously used a passive voice in a previous story I had written because of the situation "b" presented in hiding the identity of the intended subject.



If you do discover such a book, please let me know. I would likely read it for the humor alone. It probably would be just as sadistically hilarious to me as my read-through of the Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce.



And that you do, and do well. You truly are a Logophile and your presence and insight here is incredibly beneficial to all of us, both casual visitor and veteran alike. I'll be looking forward to your next entry on the use of Agreement.