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Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2013 September 12

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September 12

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Improve a sentence

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I'm trying to come up with the best way of expressing the situation (or one analogous to it) illustrated below: 

                      Door
                      Open 
------------          |
 Light on   |<---T--->|
            |         |
--------------------------->
0 < T < 5 sec

That is, (a) the light was definitely on 5 seconds before the door opened, (b) the light might still have been on when the door opened, or it might have been off. My best effort is "The light was on until at most five seconds before the door opened." I'm sure that this sentence can be improved - over to you. Tevildo (talk) 00:30, 12 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't that the wrong way around? The way I read yours, the light definitely closed five second before the door was open. "The light was on at least until 5 seconds before the door opened" conveys what you described, I think. Effovex (talk) 02:22, 12 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately "least" and "most" are irresolubly ambiguous when used with negative numbers (which is essentially what you're doing here) with some people focussing on the number, and others on the whole sweep of the quantity. I don't think there is a way to clarify it as it stands; I'd say "The light was still on 5s before and perhaps later". --ColinFine (talk) 13:18, 12 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]


These renditions are somewhat stilted and thus unsuitable for use in a work of fiction, but at least get you a precise recitation of what happened: 1. "The light was on until a point in time no more than five seconds, possibly less, before the door opened." 2. "The light was on until no more than five seconds before the door opened, possibly later." "1" indicates that the light was not on after the door opened, but didn't turn off more than 5s prior; "2" indicates that the light could have gone off at any time after D-minus-5, where D = the time the door opened. Your diagram and your verbal description seem to disagree on whether your time block T can include the moment D. Use "1" if the end of T is defined by D; use "2" if D can be within T. ☯.ZenSwashbuckler.☠ 16:54, 12 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This risks coming out as "The light was on for about five seconds before the door opened, possibly less, but definitely not more." The point is that "the light was on no more than..." could imply "the light was on for no more than..." My suggestion would be, "The light was still on 5 seconds before the door opened, and may have still been on when it opened." or: "The light could have been turned off in the last 5 seconds before the door opened; at any rate, it was certainly on before that time." IBE (talk) 22:51, 12 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Passivization

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I have a sentence in active voice: 

             I try to write a letter.

What would be its passive voice constructions? The ones I could think of are: 

             1. To write a letter is being tried by me.
             2. To write a letter is tried by me.
             3. A letter is being tried to be written by me.
             4. A letter is tried to be written by me.

Are all of these sentences equally acceptable to the native speakers of English? kindly help.

14.139.82.6 (talk) 04:35, 12 September 2013 (UTC) Sukhada India 12/09/2013[reply]

They're basically all unacceptable. One or more of them might be "grammatical" in some formal sense, but none of them are things that a native speaker would naturally say in any ordinary context. --Trovatore (talk) 05:19, 12 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, the active voice sentence should read, "I am trying to write a letter." However, your construction would work in the sentence, "I try to write a letter every day." As Trovatore notes, those four passive voice examples would not be used in writing. I could imagine someone saying it out loud if they're trying to finish a sentence instead of verbally "erasing" it and starting over. But they do serve as good illustrations of why passive voice can be so ugly and awkward. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:33, 12 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I think the last point is a little overstated. Passive voice is perfectly fine, used correctly — it lets you put the thing you're most interested in as the subject of the sentence. There are reasons not to use it, but I don't think they're well exemplified by these sentences, just because they are so far from what a native speaker would naturally produce. --Trovatore (talk) 06:49, 12 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It would be acceptable - say, in the case of someone learning a language, or a child - to say: "Writing a letter is something I try", or more likely "..something I try to do" or "...something I have tried." Ghmyrtle (talk) 07:23, 12 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I would say number 3 is grammatically correct, but I can't imagine anyone ever saying it. I think the best way of turning this sentence passive is to use a gerund as the subject: "writing a letter is being tried by me". --Nicknack009 (talk) 07:30, 12 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree that No. 3 is OK. The letter is not being tried. The object of "I try" is "to write a letter", and hence the only valid passivisation would be "To write a letter is tried by me", or perhaps "Writing a letter is tried by me" but that is really the passive of "I try writing a letter". If I had to choose one, I'd prefer No. 2, but I hope I never have to choose. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 09:33, 12 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I can come up with an (admittedly forced) reading of No. 3 No. 4 whereby it's a grammatical construction. Didn't Caryl Chessman write something along the lines of
? Well, I'm not sure, maybe he used a different verb. But anyway you can do it with that sense of the word try, meaning "subject to trials and travails". The letter really doesn't want to be written by me, but it is, and has to live with that somehow. --Trovatore (talk) 18:18, 12 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, wait, actually I mean No. 4. --Trovatore (talk) 18:19, 12 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Also, it's filtered back to me that Chessman said "taxed", not "tried". I can't find the exact quote though. --Trovatore (talk) 23:30, 12 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The verb's got at least three senses, to attempt, to prosecute in court and to weary/burden/test. μηδείς (talk) 23:38, 12 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
14.139.82.6 -- In an "I X to Y a Z" construction (where verbs X and Y have the same implicit subject), a change to passive which involves verb X and noun Z being brought together usually doesn't work too well, since noun Z (object of verb Y) is neither a subject nor an object of verb X. This is why possibilities 3 and 4 above don't work. So in a sentence such as "I want to write a letter", the only real passive possible is actually "I want a letter to be written by me" (a little odd-sounding, but not for grammatical reasons). For your sentence, the closest I can come is something like: "One of the things which is being tried by me is to write a letter"... AnonMoos (talk) 10:24, 12 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
'..one of the things which are being tried' </bugbear> </lostcause> AndrewWTaylor (talk) 11:43, 12 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Bugs has confused the active voice with the present progressive. I try to write a letter is indeed in the active voice.
The passive would have to be I am tried to write a letter, which is invalid because "I am tried" implies in court, and the verb cannot govern "to write a letter" in the passive voice, since the subject "I" has taken its place as implied object. It is possible to say "Writing a letter was tried", although that is not the passive transformation of the original sentence. μηδείς (talk) 16:32, 12 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This is one of those many situations where there is no using the passive voice without sounding like an unforgivable weasel. If I had to produce something for this (if it was imperative that something be produced by me for this), I'd switch the inescapably active verb "try" to a noun and pacify the noun's helping verb: An attempt is being made (by me) to write a letter. Or else I would get rid of "try/attempt/(etc.)" entirely, use the imperfect tense, and simply leave out whether or not I have finished trying to write: A letter was begun by me signifies an attempt but implies that success may not yet be attained, without necessarily implying failure. ☯.ZenSwashbuckler.☠ 17:12, 12 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I can agree with all the answers above, but wouldn't it be simpler just to say that the passive in English almost always comes from the simple active construction, X-Verb-Y, being converted into the standard passive, Y is/was Verbed by X? If there is no direct object (I don't think "to write a letter" is an object, properly speaking), then you don't put it in the passive. It's just a rule. If you like, there are degrees of wrongness, and all your sentences are just wrong in the sense of being totally unnatural. They may be grammatically tenable, but that does not matter, if no one actually says them. "Try" is a catenative verb by the way; I don't know if that makes it active, passive, or something else. IBE (talk) 23:12, 12 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I have no idea what the OP is trying to do, besides using grammatical conventions to construct a technically correct, yet obscure phrase. Even so, I'll just throw in another example:
The writing of a letter was tried by myself. Plasmic Physics (talk) 00:02, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

What would be the passive voice of this sentence? Count Iblis (talk) 14:01, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Buffalo buffalo are buffaloed by Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo. John M Baker (talk) 16:12, 13 September 2013 (UTC) [reply]
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