I am quite new to grammar and I read this somewhere. Micky Mouse was featured in a movie. Now the answer says Verb is was featured not featured?? but why? thanks
-
Hi "The Educator", welcome to EL&U. Regrettably I'm flagging this as off-topic ("belongs on ELL"). Note that this site is "for linguists, etymologists, and serious English language enthusiasts".You may not be aware that our other site English Language Learners is the best place to look for answers as a newcomer to English grammar. If you have a question for ELL, be sure to read their guidance on what you can ask. :-)– Chappo Hasn't ForgottenDec 23, 2018 at 11:29
-
The answer to what? What was the question? Are you asking about the difference between “MM featured in a movie” and “MM was featured in a movie”? Or about whether the verb in the latter sentence is featured or was featured?– Janus Bahs JacquetDec 23, 2018 at 13:21
-
In this context, to feature is one of those verbs that effectively carries the same meaning whether it's used in active or passive constructions. Same as They married in church / They were married in church. This is an English Language Learners question.– FumbleFingersDec 23, 2018 at 14:32
2 Answers
This is a passive sentence. The active sentence would be:
A movie featured Mickey Mouse.
So it is easy to see now that the verb is featured. In the passive voice(in this case; the past simple), we add the auxiliary be verb, and so the new sentence is:
Micky Mouse was featured in a movie.
A verb in the passive voice is always a verb phrase and is always consisted of
- Auxiliary verb (at least one, depending on the tense)
- the principle verb in its perfect participle form
Micky Mouse was featured in a movie
What you read is half-right. This is a passive construction. The passive voice prototypically consists of a form of the auxiliary verb "be" followed by a past participle such as "featured" in your example.
Syntactically, though, "was featured" is not a constituent, not 'the verb', for there are two verbs involved here and hence two clauses: the matrix clause "Mickey Mouse was featured in a movie", and the embedded subordinate clause "featured in a movie", which functions as complement of "was".