Learn English – Change “I must go and look for the brothers.” from active voice to passive voice

active-voicepassive-voice

Sentence: I must go and look for my brothers.

I need to change this sentence to passive voice. What would be the correct passive voice form of this sentence?

I think the verb here is "look".

My attempt: To look for my brothers is why I have to go.

Context:
This sentence has been assigned as part of homework assignment for a 4th grade kid. The assignment is to convert sentences from active form to passive form. It may be possible that the teacher made an error, and this sentence cannot be changed to passive form. However, I am not sure.

Best Answer

This is a silly question. It asks one to do something that can't be done.
The sentence

  • I must go and look for my brothers.

is Intransitive, but Passive can only apply to a Transitive clause.

The Passive rule promotes the direct object to subject, demotes the old subject to an optional object of by, and adds the auxiliary verb be before the past participle form of the main transitive verb. Like this:

  • Marie shot my cousin. == Passive => My cousin was shot (by Marie).

But if the clause isn't transitive, there isn't a direct object to promote, and other noun phrases don't usually work.

  • Mary slept all day. but not *All day was slept (by Mary).

Sometimes prepositional objects can be passivized, if the preposition is one that makes a transitive verb out of an intransitive one, like look (at) or listen (to)

  • We must look at/listen to that again. == Passive => That must be looked at/listened to again.

But that's rarely the case, so most prepositions after verbs don't mark direct objects. And without a direct object, Passive is impossible.

The real solution is to get a new textbook that actually describes English, instead of something like English.

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