Let's Know Verb 4

                    Let’s Know Verb

                       Nidhu Bhusan Das

          A Facebook notification today (12-06-2017) reads”265 people who like My Grammar School haven’t heard from you in a while. Write a post.” Should I go gaga? Perhaps I shouldn’t. I have promised to continue with my deliberation on Verb. I cannot renege on it.

        Well, now I would like to dwell on Passivization.Why do we need passivize the verb in form and in essence? Every verb has a Doer, direct or indirect. Indirect here means implied, in the extended form and essence. When we say:

We play football, we use the Doer “We”; but when we say:

@Go to school, we mean “I tell you to go to school.” In this case ‘I’ is the doer of the implicit/imported verb ‘tell’ and ‘you’ is its object in the extended statement/assertive form of the imperative sentence (Go to school).We can passivize the imported verb ‘tell’ followed by the infinitive form of the original verb ‘Go’ which is intransitive having no slot for an ‘Object’ (You are told [by me] to go to school.)

     We may sometimes feel Doer need be given more importance than the Receiver (Object) of the action of the verb. When the Doer is given importance, it is the ‘Subject’ of the verb. In fact the verb takes the passive form when the ‘Subject’ is passivized or made inactive and the Receiver (Object) is given the status/position of ‘Subject’. When the Doer is the Subject of the verb we have the active voice and when the Receiver is the Subject, we have the passive voice. When Police arrests someone, the hearer/reader may be/is more interested to know about the person (Receiver) arrested than about who (Doer) arrested. So we rather say,” A pickpocket is arrested.” and even omit the passive ‘Doer’ police or the ‘by phrase’ (by police).

    Verbs, original or imported, in every type of sentence may have its passive form (‘to be’ verb + past participle form of the main verb).But we have not in use the passive form of the verb in all the twelve tenses. The passive voice of the verb in the Future Continuous and three Perfect Continuous tenses is not in use. Let’s see the passive form of the verb in eight tenses (in statement/assertive sentence):

        Active                                                               Passive

We play football.                                          Football is played by us.

We played football.                                      Football was played by us.

We shall play football.                                  Football will be played by us.

We are playing football.                               Football is being played by us.

We were playing football.                            Football was being played by us.

We have played football.                             Football has been played by us.

We had played football.                               Football had been played by us.

We shall have played football.                     Football will have been played by us.

 

                                            Imperative Sentence 

 

Play football.                                              Let football be played.

                                                                          Football should/must be played.

Go there. (The verb is intransitive             You are told to go there. (@explained                                                                                                                              and the sentence in essence means         above)

” I tell you to go there”)

         

                                             Optative Sentence

May you live long(means “I wish                 It is wished by me that you

                                                                    (may) live long.

you may live long)                       

                                             Exclamation

(I exclaimed)What a

 beautiful flower!               It is exclaimed (by me) that it is a beautiful flower.

(to be continued)