English grammar - passive voice

by **shiningaqua** on Wed Feb 03, 2010 4:54 pm

hi
I am an English Teacher in India and teach senior school students. I have come across this specific problem of passivisation. What would be the passive of the following sentences:
a) The bottle contains milk.
b) I wish to help you.

Any ideas? please help.

shiningaqua

**Sponsor**

by **shaun austin** on Tue Mar 30, 2010 4:33 pm

Hi

My degree is in English Language. These sentences are not the type that would normally be passivised in English; although maybe you could passivise a) as "Milk is contained (in the bottle)." Sentence b) could technically be passivised as "To help you is wished (by me)," but this doesn't feel correct. Through it-clefting you could adapt it to "It is wished (by me) to help you," but, again, this wouldn't be used in reality.

I think the problem in passivising sentence a) is that the agent (the bottle) isn't active, which would normally be the case in something that could be passivised. In sentence b) the verb (wish) isn't transitive. Usually, only transitive verbs are passivised.

Hope this helps.

Shaun