त्वरित लिंक्स
English Language
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In advanced English morphosyntax and voice diathesis, active-to-passive voice transformations involve complex operations concerning valency changes, ditransitive object promotion, causative/sensory bare infinitives, and prepositional verbs. Consider the following four advanced propositions regarding active and passive voice conversion: I. When an active clause features a ditransitive verb taking both a direct and an indirect object (e.g., 'The board of directors awarded the senior researcher a prestigious fellowship grant'), standard English grammar permits either object to be promoted to the subject position in the passive voice, yielding either 'The senior researcher was awarded a prestigious fellowship grant by the board of directors' or 'A prestigious fellowship grant was awarded to the senior researcher by the board of directors', both maintaining full syntactic well-formedness. II. When an active sentence contains a complex modal auxiliary construction combined with a progressive aspect (e.g., 'The forensic accountants must be auditing the offshore corporate accounts currently'), standard English passive syntax allows the continuous passive form to be constructed by inserting the gerundial auxiliary 'being' immediately before the past participle, resulting in 'The offshore corporate accounts must be being audited currently by the forensic accountants'. III. In active clauses governed by verbs of sensory perception taking bare infinitives (e.g., 'The night watchman observed the suspicious intruder scale the perimeter fence'), the passive transformation requires the bare infinitive to obligatorily convert into a full to-infinitive (e.g., 'The suspicious intruder was observed to scale the perimeter fence by the night watchman'), recovering the historical marker 'to' that remains unexpressed in the active voice. IV. When an active verb is followed by a fixed prepositional complement that forms a tight lexical unit (e.g., 'The committee laughed at the absurd proposal'), standard English passive conversion requires the preposition to be detached from the verb and placed exclusively at the absolute beginning of the passive sentence rather than remaining adjacent to the lexical verb (e.g., 'At was laughed the absurd proposal by the committee'). Identify the option that correctly evaluates the grammatical, syntactic, and semantic validity of propositions I, II, III, and IV according to standard English grammar and English passive voice principles.
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Detailed Explanation
To determine the correct evaluation of the four propositions regarding active and passive voice conversion:
- **Proposition I is valid**: Ditransitive verbs (such as *give*, *award*, *send*, *offer*) allow two distinct passive transformations by promoting either the indirect (animate) object or the direct (inanimate) object to subject status. When the direct object becomes the subject, a preposition (usually *to* or *for*) is retained before the indirect object.
- **Proposition II is valid**: Progressive/continuous passives in complex modal constructions correctly insert the auxiliary form *being* before the past participle (e.g., *must be being audited*).
- **Proposition III is valid**: Verbs of sensory perception (*see*, *hear*, *observe*, *watch*) and causative verbs (*make*) take bare infinitives in the active voice, but upon passive conversion, the infinitive marker *to* must be overtly restored (e.g., *was observed to scale*).
- **Proposition IV is invalid**: In prepositional verbs (phrasal verbs or verbs governing fixed prepositions like *laugh at*, *look after*, *deal with*), the preposition remains tightly bound to the verb in the passive voice rather than migrating to the front of the sentence (correct: *'The absurd proposal was laughed at by the committee'*).
For a comprehensive linguistic breakdown of voice alternations, consult the English passive voice documentation.
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