English Language & Usage Asked on December 26, 2020
Need help converting this sentence to passive voice:-
The students will assemble in the hall.
I think it should be:-
The hall will be assembled by the students.
But it sounds like students are building the hall by putting together some pieces.
Should I change it to assembled in by the students
? Or something else?
I in comments wrote to John Lawler:
What, you don’t like “The students will go downtown for lunch” becoming “Downtown will be gone to by the students for lunch” much, eh? :-) Because such abominations do crop up from not-native speakers from time to time, I suspect nobody ever let them in on the joke in the first place.
And then to the asker:
You can't ever do passive inversion on intransitive verbs, including both yours and mine. If what I wrote sounds right to you, somebody has trained you wrong because it’s completely ungrammatical in English. You must have a transitive verb with a direct object to use passive inversion on so that you can invert subject and object. Intransitive verbs lack an object to use for the subject.
Also, homework is a mass noun not a count noun, so you can never say *a homework.
Correct answer by tchrist on December 26, 2020
You are correct,
The hall will be assembled by the students.
indicates that the students are building or constructing the hall in some way.
Your second suggestion,
The hall will be assembled in by the students.
is technically correct but sounds quite strange to me. I'm not sure what you need this for, but you might consider substituting a synonym for "assembled." It might sound more natural as something like
The hall will be filled by the students.
The hall will be the location of the student assembly.
Answered by Typeset Mask on December 26, 2020
According to Merriam-Webster's Dictionary: assemble transitive verb to bring together (as in a particular place or for a particular purpose) They assembled a team of experts to solve the problem. So, the passive sentence is: 'The students will be assembled in the hall.' As about the logical subject, it is omitted here.
Answered by user307254 on December 26, 2020
The only reasonable way of having something passive in this sentence would be
The students will be assembled in the hall.
Of course this could imply by someone, which is missing in the original sentence, so I am not sure this helps at all.
Answered by fev on December 26, 2020
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