Here is an old cartoon (for me) but a new cartoon for you. I was teaching the passive voice a while back, and I had to make this point via the white board in response to a very frustrated grammar student asking, "Why can't I say, 'The soup is tasting John'?":
That's why you can't say "the soup is tasting John"! Okay, so it really looks like the soup is eating John (maybe he's a really aggressive taster?), but the point is these two sentences are not equivalent although they may seem like it to students who haven't learned how to use passive voice yet.
Students are also resistant to using it at first and will mark it wrong on a test because they learn that stative verbs cannot take a progressive form. For example, we cannot say "He is being a lawyer now" or "I am seeing a bird out the window now." This sentence ("The soup is being tasted by John") is the passive form of "John is tasting the soup." It is not the copula "is" in the progressive form.
Anyway, have a good one, and don't let any soup taste you!
-Bill
Students are also resistant to using it at first and will mark it wrong on a test because they learn that stative verbs cannot take a progressive form. For example, we cannot say "He is being a lawyer now" or "I am seeing a bird out the window now." This sentence ("The soup is being tasted by John") is the passive form of "John is tasting the soup." It is not the copula "is" in the progressive form.
Anyway, have a good one, and don't let any soup taste you!
-Bill
RSS Feed
