タグ: passive sentence

When making a passive sentence, the verb must be in the passive form. Please refer to yesterday’s post about verb conjugations for passive form.

Here is an active sentence;

1. Sensei wa Watashi o Home mashita. (The teacher praised me.)

The particle “-o” is usually used as the object marker of transitive verb. Therefore, you may be able to tell that the verb “Homeru/Homemasu” is a transitive verb, and “Watashi” followed by the particle “-o” is the object of the action of parising. The sentence 1 is grammatically okay. But when a teacher praised you, you may want to tell others by making “Watashi” the subject of the sentence.

2. Watashi wa Sensei ni Homerare mashita. (I was praised by the teacher.)

The sentence 2 is a passive sentence. In this passive sentence 2, “Watashi wa” is the subject which was the object “Watashi o” in the active sentece1, and “Sensei ni” is the word that the passive action came from. The particle “-ni” has a function to indicate where (who) the action came from in the sentences of giving-receiving, passive and causative.

And “Homerareru/Homeraremasu” is the passive form of the “Homeru/Homemasu”. Since the Nai-form of Homeru is “Hom<e>nai”, we can tell it is a Group2 verb. The passive form of Group2 verbs can be obtained with [Stem]+rareru/raremasu.

Then, another active sentence is below;

3. Haha wa Watashi ni Kaimono o Tanomi mashita. (My mother asked me to go shopping.)

This is an active sentence, and a transitive verb predicate sentence using not only “-o” but also “-ni”. In the case of the sentence 1, we converted that to be a passive sentence by turning the word with “-o” to be the subject; Watashi o => Watashi wa. But for this sentence3, do you make the word “Kaimono o(shopping)” the subject in a passive sentence? No. We turn the word with “-ni” to be the subject, which means “Watashi ni” in the active sentence needs to the subject “Watashi wa” in the passive sentence.

4. Watashi wa Haha ni Kaimono o Tanomare mashita. (I was asked by my mother to go shopping.)

Please compare moves of the words and changes of the particles in the conversion from sentence 3 to 4. It is interesting that the particle “-ni” has different functions in the sentence 3 and 4. In the sentence3, “-ni” of “Watashi ni” is to indicate the destination that the action is heading towards (to whom to ask). On the other, “-ni” of “Haha ni” in the sentence4 is to indicate who (where) the action came from in a passive sentence as well as in the sentence2. The particle “-o” hasn’t changed in the conversion from the sentence 3 to 4. Although “-o” changed in the case of sentence 1 and 2, after all, we need to take note that the object and the particle “-o” is strongly tightened each other in relationship with a transitive verb.

And “Tanomareru/Tanomaremasu” is the passive form of the “Tanomu/Tanomimasu”. Since the Nai-form of Tanomu is “Tanom<a>nai”, we can tell it is a Group1(-M) verb. The passive form of Group1 verbs can be obtained with [Stem]+areru/aremasu (Tanom+areru).

<This post is incomplete. It is natural to deal with passive sentences using transitive verb. However, there are some passive sentences using intransitive verbs in Japanese. I am not sure whether or not it is good to introduce the passive sentence of intransitive verbs at the beginners’ level. Personally, I am against it. I just want to add this argument.>

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This post was written with reference to the exercise A2 on Section37 of “Minna no Nihongo (2nd Edition)” published by “3A Corporation”