The two sentences under question are
- We saw him enter the room.
- He was seen to enter the room.
The second is clearly the passive transform of the first. The problem is what to do with the infinitive complement, complicated by where the to came from (or went to, if one uses a different model). As usual, a great deal has been deleted and modified already in that first sentence. Where did it come from?
As I mentioned in the comment, that first sentence is the result of B-Raising, followed by Passive.
If you don't understand right away what I mean by Raising (never mind A- or B-), you can take a look at the link. It's some explanation, with examples, and a couple of solved problems. This is real English syntax, and it's likely to be strange; sorry about that. Strange people like me and my students think it's interesting.
Or you can try to make sense out of what follows. Or, preferably, both.
The sense verb see governs B-Raising, which requires an infinitive object complement clause for see, roughly -- pre-deletions -
- We saw
[[for him] [to enter [the room]]]
The infinitive object clause [S] has inner bracketings for the subject [NP] of the infinitive clause and the infinitive verb phrase [VP] of the clause -- which contains a direct object NP. Both the subject NP and the VP are marked by complementizers (respectively, for NP and to VP). I.e,
See is a sense verb and therefore occurs in a lot of idioms and metaphors. Mostly they involve making reference to metaphors, like I see what you mean. And most of them involve chopping out chunks of clauses ("clause reduction" as it's called in the trade; see Jim McCawley's famous paper "On Examining the Remains of Deceased Clauses").
It is normal for the subject complementizer for to be deleted, unless the infinitive is at the beginning of a sentence.
I want him to win the trophy.
%I want for him to win the trophy.
For him to speculate would be premature.
*Him to speculate would be premature.
This is especially true when the subject gets deleted with Equi. So the for in [for him] is normally lost -- just remember that complementizers can surface again, in different constructions, and different dialects; this is where for to see my Pollyanna comes from.
Another of the peculiarities of sense verbs is that they don't allow to with an
infinitive complement.
- *We saw him to enter the room.
- We saw him enter the room.
So both of the complementizers are deleted, leaving only the bracketing
- We saw [[him] [enter the room]]
That's still a direct object clause. What Raising does, when it's governed by a Raising verb like see, is to change the bracketings, freeing the [him] to be the new Object of see, with the infinitive clause, now demoted to a phrase (en chômage, in Relational Grammar terminology), left right where it is at the end.
- We saw [him] [enter the room].
Now Passive applies to this Raised object him, producing
- [He] was seen [to enter the room].
Except that the passive of see doesn't have quite the same affordances as the active -- as I said, sense verbs are complicated -- and so the passive seen still requires the ordinary to complementizer. Which is automatically provided, free of charge, like the do of Do-support, from That Big Bag Of Auxiliaries In The Sky.
P.S. Linear structure mashups like “S+V+O+OC” are very idiosyncratic, are not good representations of what's really going on, don't contribute much information, and therefore probably are not the best way to search for information. Syntax is constructions and rules.
Why headlines are the way they are is usually very simple:
- They need to be concise (there is limited space)
- They need to be catchy (make people want to read the article)
There are two possible sentences that could have lead to this headline:
The Government has asked about the safety of the northeast community.
The Government has been asked about the safety of the northeast community.
Obviously all the articles were dropped, and part of the verb. Also, the word government has been abbreviated. This definitely makes the headline more concise.
Now, you are observing very correctly, we do no longer know if the government was asked, or if they did the asking. You will have to read the article to be sure. And hey, that is what the headline maker wanted: make you read the article. So, this headline is successful on both counts!
Now, even without reading the article, we can make an educated guess as to who did the asking.
If the government would be doing the asking, I would assume a present tense. After all, if the government asked something, and they have answers, I would not expect to be informed about their asking, I would expect to be informed about what they are doing or have done with the answer that they got. Of course, if someone has claimed tat they did not show any interest, it might be news-worthy to tell us that they asked.
However, if the government is asking now, the headline could simply sate "Govt. asks", even shorter than it is now.
So, without being able to be sure without reading the article, I would guess that someone, or some organisation asked the government about a situation; the implication being that the government now finds itself obliged to come up with information that it did not earlier share on its own accord.
Best Answer
In most cases, it doesn't matter terribly much whether you say "a passive verb" or "a verb in the passive" or "a verb in the passive voice" or "a verb with a passive construction". (Strictly, there isn't necessarily just one passive construction, e.g. you might say that "They were hurt" and "They got hurt" are two different passive constructions.)