Timeline for the use of "can be" in passive voice
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
13 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Mar 31, 2019 at 14:56 | history | edited | jihed gasmi | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 29 characters in body
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| Mar 30, 2019 at 14:20 | history | edited | jihed gasmi | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 147 characters in body
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| Mar 30, 2019 at 9:31 | history | edited | jihed gasmi | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 52 characters in body
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| Mar 30, 2019 at 2:30 | comment | added | Benjamin Harman | Your talk of "contradiction" wanders into the nonsensical as objects are quite capable of action, not that that's the case here since the passive voice is what's being used. Nevertheless, all verb subjects are not animate, far from it. I can't help but think that you went a little harebrained, that you started thinking in circles so much that you lost the plot and started thinking and then saying things that obviously aren't true. To be clear, there is nothing unusual about this construction in English. I speak four languages, and it exists in all of them. | |
| Mar 30, 2019 at 2:26 | comment | added | Benjamin Harman | By the way, I myself didn't answer this question because @Centaurus more or less gave the answer I would've given. All I might've added is that "can" is being used as a helping verb like "shall" or "will" and that the verb "be" is the main verb and is what casts it into the passive voice. | |
| Mar 30, 2019 at 2:16 | comment | added | Benjamin Harman | "The door can undergo being opened" is a grammatical sentence. "Can" and "undergo" go fine together. All that makes that example wrong is you using the infinitive "to be" rather than the gerund "being" since the gerund phrase "being opened" is the object of the verb "undergo." | |
| Mar 30, 2019 at 1:46 | answer | added | Centaurus | timeline score: 4 | |
| Mar 30, 2019 at 1:45 | answer | added | Barid Baran Acharya | timeline score: 0 | |
| Mar 30, 2019 at 0:30 | review | Close votes | |||
| Apr 13, 2019 at 3:05 | |||||
| Mar 30, 2019 at 0:02 | answer | added | Greg Lee | timeline score: 1 | |
| Mar 29, 2019 at 22:47 | answer | added | user31341 | timeline score: 0 | |
| Mar 29, 2019 at 22:05 | review | First posts | |||
| Mar 30, 2019 at 0:15 | |||||
| Mar 29, 2019 at 22:01 | history | asked | jihed gasmi | CC BY-SA 4.0 |