'Rare third passive voice usage in English'

By Our Staff Reporter

CUDDAPAH, MAY 20. A retired English professor and principal, Dr. Y. Hare Rama Murthy, on Sunday declared that he had discovered the rare third passive voice usage in English.

Addressing a press conference here, Dr. Murthy said the conventional method of using only two forms of passive voice had been in vogue for long. In cases where some verbs, called di- transitive, like give, buy, teach, refuse etc. had sometimes two objects, provided the possibility of forming two passive sentences.

The possibility of forming the third rare passive sentence would arise only in the case of one pronoun `her' which was the third person singular, feminine in gender, which was both accusative/dative and possessive, the rarest position held by the pronoun, he explained. Another condition required was that the direct object would have to be in plural without being preceded by any article. The other possibility, other than plural, was the uncountable noun without any article placed before it.

Three passive voice sentences were possible taking at first the indirect object `her' as a subject, direct object as another subject and thirdly with the possessive noun `her', the other direct object as another subject. `We get three meanings with the focal point shifting by giving pause between `her' and the direct object and speaking in one breath unit, without pause to get the third rare passive voice making the phrase the second direct object.'

The president of the City Citizens Association and a retired English lecturer, Mr. S. Seetharamaiah, said the third passive voice sentence was quite possible and another sentence could be linked to it to clearly state the implied portion of the sentence.

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