Learn English – Passive voice and adjective in “the city was burned”

adjectivespassive-voice

I am an EFL learner from Thailand. I have some questions about passive voice and adjective as I need your help on.

I am looking for adjectives in literature (as I need to conduct a small research on adjectives in literary works). But I am so confused between passive voice and adjective.

The given sentence is

'the city is burned' (someone burns the city)

I think it is a passive voice. but when I compare with

'I am interested' (something interests me.)

their structure, to me, look the same.

My question are: Do you consider the 'burned' in the first example an adjective? and How can we differentiate between passive voice structure and adjective?

Thank you in advance,

PETE

Best Answer

Out of context, it would be logical to assume that this is the adjective as a consequence of past events, in that "the city was burned" by someone or something and is now being described as "burned". A present construction in the passive voice would yield "the city is being burned (to the ground)". Another possibility in the passive voice is that "the city is burned every few years", again dependent on the context, which you have not included.

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