The sentence is: "I am surprised."
I wonder why it cannot be considered as the passive form of "Someone surprises me."
If it is true that it is in passive form, then why do people say that surprised is an adjective in that sentence?
Please clarify this. I'm in confusion.
Adjectives – ‘I Am Surprised’: Passive Voice or Adjective?
adjectivespassive-voice
Related Solutions
The basic question is whether sentence C is acceptable, but the motivation behind it is to know whether there are examples of PPs in active sentences that can function as subjects of passive ones.
Well, let me answer the motivation part of your question first -- because it is the easy part! :D
Yes, PPs can function as the subjects of passives. For example:
"We spent [over a year] on this problem." <-- active voice
"[Over a year] was spent on this problem." <-- passive voice
Notice that the PP "over a year" is the direct object in #1, and the subject in #2. (Example #2 was borrowed from H&P's CGEL, page 646 bottom.)
EDIT 06/30/2015:
The beginning of this answer post has an example from H&P's CGEL that uses the phrase "over a year" as subject (in #2 "[Over a year] was spent on this problem"), but unfortunately that phrase might not clearly be a preposition phrase (PP). There could be a reasonable argument that it is a noun phrase (NP).
In light of this, I would like to use the following as examples where unquestionable PPs (e.g. "after Christmas") are functioning as object and subject:
"They won't consider [after Christmas], of course, to be soon enough." <-- active voice with PP as object
"[After Christmas] won't of course be considered to be soon enough." <-- passive voice with PP as subject
Example #3 is borrowed from H&P's CGEL, page 647, [37.ii.c]; and example #4 is borrowed from their text on that same page.
END of EDIT 06/30/2015:
As to your other part of your question, which deals with whether sentence #C is acceptable: the actual sentence is kind of awkward (due to "by you"), but in spite of that awkwardness, I can imagine a reasonable context where it would be acceptable. That is, it could be a context where your testing instructor is standing next to your desk and is explaining to you that you can use your notes during that test:
- C. [Your notes] can be referred to by you whenever you need to. <-- your original example
Notice that your example #C is a prepositional passive of your example #A. Here's a more prototypical example of a prepositional passive:
The trial judge repeatedly referred to [my previous instructor's book]. <-- active voice
[My previous instructor's book] was repeatedly referred to by the trial judge. <-- prepositional passive
CGEL also provides an example of a prepositional passive using the verb "refer (to)":
- Her book was referred to. <-- page 276 [11.b]
ASIDE: Note that the verb "refer (to)" is labeled as a prepositional verb by CGEL, and that its preposition "to" is considered to be a mobile specified preposition. CGEL discusses these topics, including the verb "refer", on pages 274-80.
After re-reading this part of your original post:
He argues that, unlike direct and indirect objects, these PP types of verb complements can't function as subjects of a passive sentence:
- B. * To your notes can be referred by you whenever you need to.
It seems to me that he is arguing that the PP of a prepositional verb can't function as the subject of a corresponding passive. I'm not sure if specific info related to that issue is in CGEL, but it might be. It's that, er, it might take a bit of more work to look into this, er, ... :)
NOTE: H&P's CGEL is the 2002 reference grammar by Huddleston and Pullum (et al.), The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language.
Once upon a time, a fellow named Strunk wrote a little style-guide, and a student of his, mister White, made it a world hit.
Because of that, the style rules in that little booklet have becomes something of a holy writ in English classrooms and beyond.
One of those rules was that you should avoid the passive voice. Ironically, the authors of the rule seem to have misunderstood what the passive voice actually is, as is described in this nice column by Geoffrey K. Pullum (co-author of CGEL) on chronicle.com:
Strunk and White are denigrating the passive by presenting an invented example of it deliberately designed to sound inept.
After this unpromising start, there is some fairly sensible style advice: The authors explicitly say they do not mean "that the writer should entirely discard the passive voice," which is "frequently convenient and sometimes necessary." They give good examples to show that the choice between active and passive may depend on the topic under discussion.
Sadly, writing tutors tend to ignore this moderation, and simply red-circle everything that looks like a passive, just as Microsoft Word's grammar checker underlines every passive in wavy green to signal that you should try to get rid of it. That overinterpretation is part of the damage that Strunk and White have unintentionally done.
So there you have the short and the long of it: a well-mean advice was oversimplified, and very badly explained, and as a result, some people are still on a crusade against everything that looks like a passive voice.
The sentence that you quote in your question can easily be interpreted as being active, with the past participle aimed being used as attributive to it. Is is simply a copulative in that case.
Best Answer
Well, of course it can be considered as a passive voice construction. The active voice equivalent is quite easy to find:
The sentence can be understood in this manner, but that doesn't mean that it can only be understood this way. There's another possibility:
The word "surprised" is a participle. Participles and participial phrases can modify nouns in much the same way as adjectives. Some grammar books simply call them adjectives when they're used this way.
If I am a happy man, I can simply say "I am happy." If I do say that, then "happy" can be understood as a predicate adjective subject complement.
We can understand the "surprised" of your original sentence in the same way.
As it happens, "surprised" is a stative verb -- or, at least, it's a verb that's often used in a stative sense. Both the passive voice interpretation and the subject complement interpretation are available for your original sentence. For a stative verb, the subject complement interpretation is likely to be more useful and, for many, the more obvious interpretation.
it's not a matter of which interpretation is correct. Both are correct. It's only a matter of which interpretation makes more sense in context. If you can see both interpretations easily, then you should be able to easily choose between them as context requires. You may also find that, in many contexts, the overall meaning of the entire passage won't change no matter which interpretation you choose.
You may also want to note that "to be" isn't the only possible copular verb. There's a handful of verbs that work in copular constructions:
You're free to interpret "He is surprised" as a passive voice construction. For every other verb that fits this same pattern (and my examples are far from exhaustive) only the subject complement interpretation is obvious.