What is passive voice?

[Dawnstorm]

So you're saying that the passive voice is a side effect of poor rhetoric...

In the same way that fish are a side effect of food poisoning.

 

[KatG]

The obsession with avoiding passive voice comes from a school of writing philosophy that feels the verb "to be" is a problem and needs to be eliminated as much as possible from written English. (I believe they even have a name for writing entirely without it, but I forget what it is.) This is not the same as passive voice, as we've seen, but it gets turned into an idea of passive voice, i.e. "was" is bad, as the concepts circulated, mutated and became a critique of formal, older works of fiction and non-fiction exposition against modernist techniques. It's a stylistic option, which employs a set number of sentence patterns and beats, and one that very few authors actually employ, even though quite a few may claim they do. It's one of those things that gets talked about a lot but nobody is quite sure what the issue is and they come at it from different definitions.

Someone like Dawnstorm, who has considerable grammatical and rhetoric knowledge in multiple languages, understandably finds such philosophies rather pointless, and I agree. But at least now you know exactly what passive voice is, hippokrene, though you pretty much seemed to have it down before hand.

 

[Dawnstorm]

I'll see if I can track down the blog entry. It's a fun read (as long as you find grammar fun ).

I've found the blog entry, along with a few others on this sort of passive.

here, here, and here. Some interesting thoughts. He calls them "circumstantial passives" according to a form that exists in another language.

Btw, the last link contains a link to a paper on prepositional passives, but the link is broken. I think this is the paper in question. I'll read it now.

 

[hippokrene]

But at least now you know exactly what passive voice is, hippokrene, though you pretty much seemed to have it down before hand.

Do not think this “Dawnstorm” has done me any great service.

Once, I was carefree and innocent. I understood there was peanut butter and jelly. Peanut butter was good and beloved by many while jelly was good at times, though not so in favor. I learned to discern the nature of jelly and so approached any sandwich with confidence. I thoroughly studied the sandwich for any sign of jelly, and if none were present, I declared in peanut butter.

Then one day, a dark shadow darkened my door. I remember it was rainy that night and drops of water speckled his long trench coat. He kept his fedora low over her eyes and I was glad, for he seemed to carry an unsettling storm of his own behind them. From the fold of his coat, he handed me something curious, and in a raw, gravelly voice said one word: Nutella.

Then he was gone.

((PS: A sure hope Dawnstar is not female))

 

[Susan Boulton]

((PS: A sure hope Dawnstar is not female))

Nope.............

 

[Dawnstorm]

Then one day, a dark shadow darkened my door.

The shadow exposes both the light and the thing. Where there is light and where there are things there are always shadows. If you don't honour them they will devour you. I'm comfortable in shadows, but the sunlight... *Hiss*

 

[KatG]

LOL, I'm not really worried about you as a writer, hippokrene.

Writing is about sound, sounds that are transmitted and played into people's heads, and the multiple forms of sound, like the cultural sound of using "Aye" instead of "Yes," meaning sounds, poetic sounds, etc. There's slang, invented slang and authors reworking the language altogether, because you can do that and people will still follow it, especially for English. So when you say to someone, which sounds better:

"I was drinking."
"I drank."

they are probably going to say, "I drank," and they may say that they like it better because it is "active," because that's the crap many of them get taught, but it's really that they like the sound of it. It's more percussive.

But authors make use of different beats, not just one type of beat. There are contextual issues, character issues, sentence pattern issues, repetition -- both to be avoided and deliberately present as a narrative technique. There may be many times when saying "I was drinking" is absolutely essential for an author to the narrative, the story, the character voice, the rhythm of the paragraph.

 

[the mighty pen]

Wait a minute. It doesn't work like that.

First, I agree that "Bill was bought a car from by me," is... unusual. I do think, though, that the unagented passive, "Bill was bought a car from," sounds better. But in any case, it's usage that matters. And usage always occurs in context.

sorry to get back into this, but I'm still having problems with 'bill was bought a car from by me.' I see some mistakes in here that I think we can get to the bottom of.

So, I saw that you'd mentioned prepositional verbs, and this really interested me, because I just spent the last 4 months in Germany learning german, and I saw a lot of prep-verbs there. I hadn't really noticed their presence in english until then.

To get to the point, I'm not sure I can see the phrase 'bill was bought a car from' as having a prep-verb.
The original active phrase was: 'I bought a car from Bill'
In this case, I don't think you can argue that the verb form here is 'to buy from' which it would have to be in order to produce the passive sentence 'Bill was bought a car from by me'. In order to change the active 'I bought a car from Bill' to passive, you have to ask: what was bought? The car was bought. if you see the verb as being 'to buy from', the object could be bill. It would not be an indirect object, though, but a direct one, like in 'I depend on Joe'. 'Joe' is a direct object. Even if the verb form was 'to buy from', where would 'the car' fit in? 'the car' can't be bought from. 'The car' would have no place in the sentence. It would be a second direct object. It would be akin to saying: 'I sat on a log a chair'.
When you say something like 'I give you a present' the 'you' carries the implied 'to' which makes it an indirect object. An indirect object must have a preposition attached to it. Even if the preposition is implied, it's still there. In 'I bought a car from Bill' the preposition is not just implied, it's written. The 'from' is the preposition attached to the indirect object, which means it can't be a part of the verb form at all, which makes the verb simply 'to buy' which means you can't change the active sentence to a passive 'Bill was bought from.' You would have to make the sentence 'Bill had a car bought from him by me' or something along those lines.

But in any case, it's usage that matters. And usage always occurs in context.

What do you mean by this?

However, the following argument doesn't hold water:

Quote:
Originally Posted by the mighty pen
'I bought a car from Bill' would be passively expressed like: 'a car was bought by me.' The object in the active sentence is the car, not Bill.
end quote.


There are many types of object, and all have the potential to become the subject of a passive verb.

1. The simplest form is the direct object:

to buy:

I buy a car. --> A car is bought (by me).

2. Next is the indirect object:

I give you a present. --> You are given a present.

(Direct object: A present was given (to) you. [The to is necessary in formal situations, I think].)

3. Then there's the special case of prepositional verbs:

I depend on Joe. --> Joe can be depended on.

Here, the preposition gets tagged onto the participle.

4. Finally, it's possible to make the object of a preposition the subject of a sentence and render the verb into the passive voice, even though the prepostition is not an argument of the verb.

I've slept in this bed. ---> This bed has been slept in.

These things occur with some regularity, though they're not exactly frequent. And it's not clear what determines acceptability for these passives. There are plenty on papers on this; this is exactly the sort of topic that fascinates linguists. And, yes, these things get produced spontaneously by nativespeakers. On a linguistics blog someone once reported that his son produced something along these lines:

This bowl wasn't eaten any cereals out of.​

I'll see if I can track down the blog entry. It's a fun read (as long as you find grammar fun ).

Note that this sort of thing is probably not very common, and it's acceptability is debatable. But it is grammatically intellegible: you do understand the intended meaning. The objections are primarily aesthetic.

I think I covered most of those. The 'cereals' thing seems to have the exact same problem.

It's true that in romance languages you can leave out the pronouns and just use the words. "Ti amo," means "I love you," but only the second argument is expressed. The "I" is implied in the ending -o. You're right that far.

However, for "Piove" there is literally nothing that you could add. There is no argument implied. There's nobody who does the raining. The verb doesn't even conjugate. You can't say, "Piovo" ("I rain.") for example. This is literally a self-sufficient, process centered verb. It has no argument. I'm not an expert in romance linguistics, though, so perhaps there are papers who argue for an implied argument (ack: argue - argument, yet two different meanings...) out there. I'd be interested to see them.

It does carry an implied argument. The argument is 'it'. 'It' may not signify anything in the real world but, grammatically, it's still an argument. The verb does conjugate. The infinitive form of the verb is 'piovere.' Piove is conjugated to he/she/it because of the implied 'it' argument. When we say 'it rains', nothing is doing the raining either, but the argument is there grammatically.

 

[Dawnstorm]

sorry to get back into this, but I'm still having problems with 'bill was bought a car from by me.' I see some mistakes in here that I think we can get to the bottom of.

Don't worry about me. I find this interesting. This is going to be very technical (as if the past posts weren't ), so anyone who's not interested just skip it.

So, I saw that you'd mentioned prepositional verbs, and this really interested me, because I just spent the last 4 months in Germany learning german, and I saw a lot of prep-verbs there. I hadn't really noticed their presence in english until then.

To get to the point, I'm not sure I can see the phrase 'bill was bought a car from' as having a prep-verb.

Absolutely correct. "From Bill" is an adjunct. It's not even what you would call an indirect object (I have slightly different terminology; my use of "indirect object" is more restrictive, but I'll address that below). It's unncecessary for the verb to buy to have a "from-phrase". It's not strongly tied to the verb at all. It's an adjunct, additional information.

But, crucially, it takes the form of a prepostional phrase, and "Bill" is the object of the preposition "from". It's a prepositional object, in that sense.

The original active phrase was: 'I bought a car from Bill'
In this case, I don't think you can argue that the verb form here is 'to buy from' which it would have to be in order to produce the passive sentence 'Bill was bought a car from by me'. In order to change the active 'I bought a car from Bill' to passive, you have to ask: what was bought? The car was bought. if you see the verb as being 'to buy from', the object could be bill. It would not be an indirect object, though, but a direct one, like in 'I depend on Joe'. 'Joe' is a direct object. Even if the verb form was 'to buy from', where would 'the car' fit in? 'the car' can't be bought from. 'The car' would have no place in the sentence. It would be a second direct object. It would be akin to saying: 'I sat on a log a chair'.

Well, here we dive deep into linguistic theory, and how to describe objects.

First, in prepositional verbs such as "to depend on X" X is not a direct object. There are phrasal verbs, such as "to make up X", where "X" would be direct object, as it's not tied to the preposition. But there's a difference between the two.

There's a thing called Subject-object inversion in English. It's rare, but possible:

I don't like dogs, but cats I like.
​

Here, you move the object to the front of the clause for emphasis. "...cats I like" instead of "I like cats".

If you do this with prepositional verbs, you can move the entire prepositional phrase:

YES: On Joe you can depend.
YES: Joe you can depend on.​

This is different from phrasal verbs, where the particle is tied to the verb, rather than to the noun:

NO: Up a story I made.
YES: A story I made up.​

So phrasal verbs do have direct objects, but if prepositional phrases have direct objects at all, it would have to be the entire prepositional phrase. "On Joe" would be the direct object, rather than "Joe". This is a possible interpretation, but one that makes treatment of prepositions difficult in passives that involve prepositional objects but not prepositional verbs.

It is still possible, of course, to choose your terminology and call "Joe" the direct preposition of "rely on" (I think the Quirk/Greenbaum grammars do this, if I'm not mistaken). It's just that I'd like to make a difference in verb type here, linking the preposition to the noun rather than to the verb (even though the verb does determine which preposition is applicable).

Next, indirect objects. I tend to think of "to-phrases" in words such as "give" as adverbials (necessary adverbials, but adverbials nonetheless). But it's no biggie for me to call them indirect objects, as long as I'm not referring to the nouns alone, but to the entire prepositional phrase. In "I give a present to you", the indirect object would be "to you", not "you". (Interestingly, the Quirk grammars tend to agree with me, now, while you're more in line with the cobuild grammars on this, if I'm not mistaken.)

This does have an effect, though, in how we look at objects. To me, the passivisations of "you" in "I give you a present," and "I give a present to you" are very different processes:

I give you a present. --> You are given a present. (Standard indirect object promotion)

I give a present to you. ---> You are given a present to. (Extract object from prespostional phrase, promote object).
​

I have one step in what I call indirect objects, but two steps in what I call a prepositional object (the object of preposition in a prepositional phrase). And this then has a further effect on how I view the passivisation of prepositional objects, because - to me - the same type of object occurs in prepositional verbs and adjuncts. I do see a difference in naturalness - the closer the link of a prepositional object to the verb, the more natural the passive. But it's a sliding scale to me, not an essential difference.

This may be a key difference between us. For example:

When you say something like 'I give you a present' the 'you' carries the implied 'to' which makes it an indirect object. An indirect object must have a preposition attached to it. Even if the preposition is implied, it's still there.

I do not see an implied preposition at all in "I give you a present." Rather, I see a unique grammatical configuration I like to call "indirect object". More technically put, you can express the same semantic property (directedness) with a preposition (to) or with a syntactic structure (indirect object).

I think, we have a difference in theory, here, that affects how we interpret the language.

In 'I bought a car from Bill' the preposition is not just implied, it's written. The 'from' is the preposition attached to the indirect object, which means it can't be a part of the verb form at all, which makes the verb simply 'to buy' which means you can't change the active sentence to a passive 'Bill was bought from.' You would have to make the sentence 'Bill had a car bought from him by me' or something along those lines.

Even taking your definition of "indirect object", I wouldn't call "from Bill" an indirect object all.

In

I give a present to you,
​

The "To you" is needed to complete the verb "give". It is strongly tied to the verb. There are even sentences without a direct object, as in: "I always give to the poor," but I'd agree that the direct object is strongly implied in such cases. That's because English, being quite far down the synthetic path (languages that express grammar mostly through word order and structure than through tagged on endings), usually has indirect objects only in sentences that also have direct objects; i.e. there is a hierarchy of objects with lower-level objects requiring the presence of higher level objects.

But "from you" is entirely optional for "buy".

I buy a car,
​

is complete in a way that

I give a car​

isn't.

Thus "from Bill" is an adjunct. An additional phrase tagged on for information (or whimsy, or whatever reason), but not out of grammatical necessity. (I shouldn't say "necessity", as there are usually exceptions. )

So, yes, I agree - in even stronger terms, even, than you use - that "from Bill" is not tied to the verb.

But this does not mean that you cannot make Bill the subject of the passivised verb. And that's simply because there are prepositional passives in English and they do not need a strong connection to the verb. A frequent example in the literature is:

This bed has been slept in.​

Of course, sleep is an intransitive verb, so there are no interfering objects to that verb. And this is where we approach the real problem:

The direct object "a car", interferes with the prepositional object. That is: you have to place the direct object somewhere.

There's a prototype for indirect objects:

You were given a present.
​

Prepositional objects promoted to subject behave in the same way:

Bill was bought a car from.​

But now you have the additional problem of placing the preposition. Normally, in prepositional passives, the preposition comes right after the verb:

This bed has been slept in.​

But try this with buy, and you get:

Bill was bought from a car.​

But this - according to hierarchy of objects - would sound a lot like the passive of:

I bought Bill from a car.
​

Which is nonsense. Thus, most native speakers who use these passives (and few do) tag on the preposition after the direct object, making "buy a car" a unit for the sake of passivisation.

Btw, I quite like the causitive construction you offer up as a solution ("had a car bought").

So much for the grammatical analysis. If you're interested in more detail follow the links I gave in post #23. You'll find support for your view that they're "mistakes", since both the blogger and the paper view these sorts of passive as "at best marginally acceptable". However, both also acknowledge that idiomatic expressions of the same grammatical structure (such as "You were taken advantage of,") are perfectly all right.

For the record, I separate analysis and regularity from acceptability; the former is lignuistic-structural, the latter is linguistic-social. I also think that acceptability is far less important in writing fiction than, say, in writing job applications. I do balk at the term "mistake" for things that occur naturally, with a rationale, though (which can be extrapolated from restrictions; i.e. from potential structures that do not exisist with any frequency).

What do you mean by this?

1. Things that look strange in a text book may pass unnoticed in real life. Happens all the time. Which explains why most grammar gripers often make the same type of mistake they gripe about. (I just love the coinage grammar nazi hypocrite.)

2. If language doesn't behave the way your theory predicts, your theory is faulty, not the language. (But note that your averse reaction to "Bill was bought a car from," is also part of the language: as part of the data on perception, not as part of the generative rules, though.)

I think I covered most of those. The 'cereals' thing seems to have the exact same problem.

Which is why I brought it up. (It was some other sort of snack, though. Look at the links, if you're interested.)

It does carry an implied argument. The argument is 'it'. 'It' may not signify anything in the real world but, grammatically, it's still an argument. The verb does conjugate. The infinitive form of the verb is 'piovere.' Piove is conjugated to he/she/it because of the implied 'it' argument. When we say 'it rains', nothing is doing the raining either, but the argument is there grammatically.

No, it doesn't. You're treating Italian, as if it were English. I see no evidence for an implied argument; instead I suspect theory aesthetics. Are you an English native speaker? If so, I can see how you have trouble separating "person" from "pronouns". Italian relies a lot more on verb-endings; and in cases where there is no argument they do not need to bother with a dummy subject, like English does. (If you're interested in that topic google valency.)

EDIT: Another interesting article by Tseng stored for later reading.

 

[Laer Carroll]

This is getting way too complicated, and downright silly.

Active and passive voice are tools of our trade. Neither is better than the other. The bad rep of passive voice comes from its frequent misuse. This does not mean it is useless.

A good guide to the official view of active/passive voice is at Purdue University's Online Writing Lab. It is short, clear, and has some nice examples of sentences with a big yellow arrow highlighting the words or phrases on which the focus of attention falls.

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar/g_actpass.html

The official definitions of active and passive voice don't seem all that useful to me. For one, those definitions divide sentences into two parts, when there are actually three: the subject, verb, and an optional object: S-V-(O).

(Forget other languages, such as Spanish, where the form can be IMPLIED S-V-O: (S)-V-O. You'll be writing in English.)

Here are some examples where the Subject, Verb, or Object is the focus of attention. I imagine you can come up with better examples.

S focus --------- John rides horses.
V focus --------- Riding horses is Johns hobby.
O focus --------- Horses are what John rides. [as opposed to camels or dragons]

The advice to avoid passive voice ENTIRELY is an example of how good advice can be oversimplified into bad advice.

Another is the idiotic advice to "show not tell" which we discussed in the thread Scenes vs. Summaries.


Laer Carroll

 

[hippokrene]

This is getting way too complicated, and downright silly.

I ask 'Why is the sky blue?'

Poster one says, ‘It's because light breaks down in the atmosphere.'

Poster two spends three pages describing the composition of atmosphere, how light is refracted, and how my eye perceives color, and then provides information on why the sky is sometimes blue but sometimes pink, red, orange, or purple.

Neither of them are silly. Poster two might be too complicated but it’s just as possible that poster one is too simple. To the mythical average reader on the internet, short and simple might be preferable to long and complex, but asked the question and am not a mythical creature. I respect and appreciate Dawnstar’s ability to go into great detail when it comes to grammar, just like I respect and appreciate Fung Ku going into great detail when it comes to literary history and theory, and like I respect and appreciate KatG going into great detail when she explains why we should ignore grammar, history, and theory when it comes to our writing.

 

[Dawnstorm]

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar/g_actpass.html

The link's actually fair enough for the grammar. It's a simplification, but it should do. It, however, falls into the common traps, where writing advice is concerned. Let's go through the examples in pairs:

1. "The dog bit the boy." --> "The boy was bitten by the dog."

This is the standard example. Both versions are pretty much on par. They talk about it in terms of agent/patient (who does the action?), though, which isn't too useful a starting point in describing the function of the passive voice.

Generally, you decide on the subject of a sentence, and then it's predicate. Once you've chosen the verb, the grammatical voice is a result of that choice.

a) Look, a dog. It won't bite me, will it?

b) Joe's helping out at the animal shelter today. I hope he doesn't get bitten by a dog.
​

So basically the voice you're using on a verb depends on which subject you choose for it. Which subject you choose for it, in turn, depends on a variety of factors. The default, though, is that a sentence's subject is it's theme.

The dog (theme: what about the dog?) won't bit me, will it (Ah, you're worried it might bite you. Gotcha.)?
​

Very often, you can avoid the passive voice by choosing a different verb:

a) I was given a present.

b) I received a present.
​

However, the different verb-choice will come with additional changes - above, "received" sounds more formal than "was given".

But in the dog-bite-boy example, both sentences are equally valid, albeit in different contexts.

2. "Pooja will present her research at the conference." --> "Research will be presented by Pooja at the conference."

Here, the active voice version is more natural than the passive voice version. It thus sounds better. "Good sentence, bad sentence" is a common game people play, if they wish to discredit a grammatical function. See how I said that the former is more natural? What this means is that native speakers, unless under the influence of another silly rule, are way more likely to produce the first sentence than the second one.

Why? Well, it's complex.

The major difference is the role of the research being presented. In the active voice version it's "Pooja's research"; in the passive voice version it's "research". The research has gone from specific to general. Pooja might be presenting the research of a sick colleague for all we know. Thus the two sentences don't express the same state of affairs.

A word-for-word transformation would have read:

Her research will be presented by Pooja at the conference.
​

But this is still awkward. Not least, because now "her" refers forward rather than backward (and to an unusual position). This is an unusual (though not ungrammatical) use of pronouns, so we usually get hints. "Her own research", or "by Pooja hersef".

More likely, though, we'd introduce Pooja together with her research:

Pooja's research will be presented by herself at the conference.
​

Now this sentence reads better than the one they give. I do think that, pragmatically, that's the most likely equivalent in the passive voice for their active voice sentence, but that's - of course - debatable.

The addition of the "by herself", though, indicates that we expected someone else to present it. This means that, by saying "by herself", we're putting emphasis on Pooja. This emphasis, though, is then downplayed by adding "at the conference". I can't - off the top of my head - think of a context in which I would emphasise both "Pooja" and the conference. If I were informing you about the location, I'd have:

Pooja's research will be presented at the conference.​

No agent. We assume, through what we know about the institutional context, that Pooja will present it herself.

If we thought Pooja couldn't make it to the conference, but it turns out untrue, we'd get:

Pooja's research will be presented by herself.​

The location is implied; we thought Pooja couldn't make it there, after all.

Remember, though, what we said in (1).

a) Ooh, Pooja's research is quite interesting. It'll even be presented by herself. She's such a good speaker, isn't she? I thought she couldn't make it to the conference.​

b) Have you heard? Pooja's recovered. She's going to present her research at the conference, after all.​

In any case, I think:

Pooja's research will be presented at the conference.​

is the most natural version (the one with the most real-life applications), so that "Pooja will present her research at the conference." --> "Pooja's research will be presented at the conference," is closer to the transformation in (1) than the awkward stuff they produced for the example.

They're choice of examples made the passive voice look worse than it actually is.

3. "Scientists have conducted experiments to test the hypothesis." --> "Experiments have been conducted to test the hypothesis."

Here, the passive voice sentence is the more natural one. Why? I have a hard time finding a context in which I would talk about scientists in general, but then use the perfect aspect suggesting a specific occurance.

Notice how they use the definite article "the" for "hypothesis"? This means we're talking about a specific hypothesis; so why aren't we also talking about specific scientists? ("Scientists from the MIT have conducted experiements to test the hypothesis that...")

The passive voice, on the other hand, is quite natural. Note that they introduce the omission of the agent at that stage (the two former examples still had the "by-phrase"). That's, I think, no accident. This pair of examples is crafted to show that omission of agents is not always a bad thing. ("Experiments have been conducted..." is no vaguer than "Scientists have conducted experiments..." Who else would conduct experiments?)

So in this case, it's the active voice that looks worse than it is. (Note that - here as in (2) - it's semantics and our knowledge about the world that renders the respective sentences odd, not grammar by itself.)

4. "Watching a framed, mobile world through a car's windshield reminds me of watching a movie." --> "I am reminded of watching a movie or TV by watching a framed, mobile world through a car's windshield."

Frankly, I consider both sentences awkward, but the passive voice sentence is certainly more awkward. As in (2) or (3), though, it's again the "good sentence, bad sentence" game. Here, it's not our knowledge about the world and what we infer from that that makes things awkward. Instead it's the participant roles of the verb "remind".

Okay, in active/passive voice discussions people often simplify things by talking about "who does the action to whom". Sometimes, they call the doer the "agent", and the doee the "patient". This is a simplification, though, and failure to realise this resulted in a "bad" passive voice sentence, here.

Generally, the by-phrase requires an agent, i.e. someone or something that does something. "Watching a framed, mobile world" does the reminding, right? It's the agent, right?

Wrong.

"Watching a framed, mobile world" does nothing. It's merely a trigger. And because it's not an agent, but a trigger, placing it into the slot that normally has us expect an agent makes for an odd sentence.

To see the difference between agent and trigger, let's look at the word remind:

a) You have reminded me of my mother's birthday. --> I have been reminded of my mother's birthday by you.

b) You remind me of my mother. --> I am reminded of my mother by you.

The by-phrase in (a) is more natural than the by-phrase in (b).

The thing is: in (b) the person referred to as "you" does nothing at all. It's the process of looking at him that triggers an association in my mind. This is different from (a), where the same person has said something like, "Tomorrow is your mother's birthday."

Triggers are normally not expressed through by-phrases. This, I think, is way more natural than what they present on their site:

When watching a framed, mobile world through a car's windshield, I am reminded of watching a movie or TV.​

***

I'm not going through the other examples; I don't have the time. But it's a good idea to look for the "good sentence/bad sentence" game whenever people explain a concept. Very often, this allows you to pin point their bias, and a distortion of actual usage.

Another thing to watch out for are sentences like this one:

"In most nonscientific writing situations, active voice is preferable to passive for the majority of your sentences."

This is actually true. Academic writing has the highest ratio of active to passive verbs and even there passives rarely go beyond 30 %. (30 % is very high already.) The hierarchy - I wish I could trace down the statistics - is something like: Academic --> Journalism --> Fiction --> Casual (with spoken language having the least passive voice).

The thing is this: the passive voice is already rare by it's very nature. There is no reason to ask people to reduce it. The key reason why people use too much passive voice is a misguided theory: people use too much passive voice when they're not talking like the normally would. For example, as much as I hate Elements of Style, the original booklet was written by Strunk in 1916 as a teaching aid to be used in his very own class room. I emphasise this: in the class room. This is an environment where people actively try to write well, to receive a good mark. There's a prevailing attitude that learning to write well means moving a way from the way you write now. For example, a deliberate attempt at varying sentence structure might result in an awkward passive. Or perhaps some noticed the passives in academic writing, and they're imitating the style but not doing a good job of it?

In any case, you need to figure out why people use to much passive voice, and then you need to counter their faulty theories. Yet another faulty theory that tugs in the opposite direction is no solution; although it will improve texts at first (because all the faulty passives based on faulty theory get irradicated) - which gives the rule the charism of success.

The confusion about what passive voice actually is, I think, arises exactly from the same circumstance. Passives are rare, in the first place. Reducing them is unneccessary. Saying that the active voice is preferrable in most contexts is true, but it's also stating the obvious. It's pointless advice. It's telling people to do what they're already doing. Is it any surprise that people look for hidden meaning that actually makes sense? Is it any surprise that they identify a lot of different issues (less "to be", don't be vague about agency...)?

In 9 out of 10 cases, I suspect, bringing up the passive voice in the first place disturbs a working intuition: you're a worse writer for knowing the rule.

That's me in rant mode. Again.

 

[KatG]

like I respect and appreciate KatG going into great detail when she explains why we should ignore grammar, history, and theory when it comes to our writing.

LOL, but I don't say we should ignore any of it. I just say they're tools, not rules. Or perhaps more accurately raw materials that provide options.

When it comes to grammar, most people are talking out of their hat. Grammar is the symbolic analysis of how we use language. Eddie is giving you the full analysis, rather than mouthing a few bromides that someone picked as the "right ones." And as you can see from that analysis, even if some of it seems technical to follow, writers have a tremendous number of choices in how to use language, from precise to instinctual.

 

[Fung Koo]

I do not see an implied preposition at all in "I give you a present." Rather, I see a unique grammatical configuration I like to call "indirect object". More technically put, you can express the same semantic property (directedness) with a preposition (to) or with a syntactic structure (indirect object).

"I give (to) you a present."

This is one of my grand beefs with grammar and linguistics in general. English is fundamentally inconsistent, and usage is variable. So while you can mark this or that the object, subject, or verb, there's no guarantee that those markers remain fixed from permutation to permutation.

The written language is merely a subset of the spoken language, total, though. The spoken language does not inform, comply, nor adhere to grammar. Rather, it is made up on the fly based on the intuitive logic of the language, which is wholly independent from grammar. Grammar employs a subset of language to generate itself, and further uses another subset of language to validate itself.

It seems to me that the whole school of grammar lays itself at the feet of Logic. But logic, too, is an artefact of language -- a subset. It is not, in and of itself, immutable. Logic and Grammar may be mutually reinforceable, but that's sort of like asking the liar to vouch for the thief.

If logic is not immutable, then grammar is not immutable. So what, really, is the point?

As a school unto itself, what is the point of grammar? Is it merely to record the evolution of the written language? Is to understand the brain? Is it to devise the perfect sentence? To trace the differences between different written languages?

Or, is like everything else -- a subjective exercise validated by subordinate theories that are also subjective exercises?

 

[Dawnstorm]

"I give (to) you a present."

This is one of my grand beefs with grammar and linguistics in general. English is fundamentally inconsistent, and usage is variable. So while you can mark this or that the object, subject, or verb, there's no guarantee that those markers remain fixed from permutation to permutation.

Well, here's the thing:

We have variation in the grammar to express a meaning:

1. indirect object (inflection only for pronouns)

2. preposition + prepositional object (inflection only for pronouns)

If you're arguing that the indirect object has an implied preposition, then there would be no difference between the prepositional object and the indirect object, and the preposition would be optional (implied when left out).

But there's a difference in word order:

"I give you a present," is the canonical position for the indirect object. "I give a present you," is downright wrong. "You I give a present," is possible, but it's a highly marked version. It stands out and is only used for effect.

"I give a present to you," is the canonical postion for the preposition phrase. "I give to you a present," and "To you I give a present," are both possible, but marked versions; i.e. the change of position is a special effect.

So: the canonical position for the preopositional phrase is impossible for the indirect object. The canonical position for the indirect object is possible for the prepositional phrase, but it's marked. How do you explain this minimal overlap in word order (especially since word order is vital to English - more vital than case-endings, which have largely been abolished), if the indirect object is a marked version of the prepositional phrase?

To my mind, we get a much cleaner theory if we simply assume independent variation. It's just theory, in the end, and not too important for the language users, as long as they don't engage in invalid rule transfer and suddenly start claiming that "I give you a present," is wrong, because prepositional phrases can only occur canonically after the direct object.

While I agree that English is often inconsistent, I think the inconsistencies aren't basic, just frequent. And I don't think we have an inconsistency in this case - we simply have two independent options. For some strange reason sticklers for "correctness" often have a problem with variation. Sometimes a language has two options to express the same meanings. Happens in the lexicon, happens in spelling, happens in grammar.

Interestingly, you only notice how systematic grammar normally is when encounter a blank spot. Take for example co-ordinated noun phrase possessives that express joint owner ship:

"These are George and Bill's books," will always be parsed as "These books are all owned by George and Bill together." "These are George's and Bill's books," still could have that interpretation, but it could also mean that some of the books belong to Bill, and some of the books belong to George.

Now replace either of the names, preferrably the second one, with a pronoun. Have fun finding out how the co-ordination should look:

These are [George and Bill]'s books.
--->
?These are [George and he]'s books.
?These are [George and his] books.

Other solutions are attested, but they're even less acceptable:

*These are [George and his]'s books.
*These are [George and him]'s books.

For first person usage (but not - to my knowledge - for other persons) you sometimes get:

?These are [George and myself]'s books.

[Stylistically, you could always break it up: "These are George's books, and his." But that's not the same grammatical construction anymore.]​

In practise, most people will probably fall back on the ambiguous "These are George's and his books."

These blank spots make you stumble. That this doesn't happen more often than it does, shows how well-structured the English grammar normally is. It's very intricate and quite comprehensive. Inconsistencies exist, but they're not the norm. If they were, how would we even communicate?

The written language is merely a subset of the spoken language, total, though.

Depends on your theory. I'm not going into that here.

The spoken language does not inform, comply, nor adhere to grammar. Rather, it is made up on the fly based on the intuitive logic of the language, which is wholly independent from grammar.

The "intuitive logic of the language" sounds to me like a pretty good paraphrase of the word "grammar".

Seriously, you can't have language without grammar. How would that even work? When in English someone says "The tomato ate the man," we know the meaning of the sentence, even though the sentence quite contradicts everything we know about life (not withstanding a certain film and its sequels and animated series). Grammar (here: in the guise of word order) is that pervasive.

Grammar employs a subset of language to generate itself, and further uses another subset of language to validate itself.

I'm wondering: do you define grammar as a formal system superimposed on an empirical language?

The problem with language is self-correction. Since grammar exists only when people reproduce it by (a) speaking/writing, (b) listening/reading, or (c) judging/editing, mistakes may become accepted usage, and accepted usage may die out with its last users, becoming archaic. Since the grammarians are as prone to subjectivity as any other users, I don't much like any grammars that do without corpus analysis. I do think usage matters over theory.

And then there's the topic of dialects vs. Standard English (the dialect that nobody speaks naturally, but everybody's supposed to know, and which is usually based on elite usage). But that's yet another topic.

It seems to me that the whole school of grammar lays itself at the feet of Logic.

Traditional grammar does that. To some extent, generative grammar, too. Structural grammar is primarily empirical, though the methodology has to be logically sound - as all science (which doesn't mean that it has to assume that grammar itself logical). There are other sorts of grammars, some of which border on psychology (as the grammars that derives from cognitive linguistics [Langacker etc.]).

But logic, too, is an artefact of language -- a subset. It is not, in and of itself, immutable. Logic and Grammar may be mutually reinforceable, but that's sort of like asking the liar to vouch for the thief.

Wait a minute. A couple of steps back, and then advance slowly. Something seems off, here. To me, logic is a combination of axioms and transformation rules, which results in a formal system. Languages are not a formal systems. We tend to describe grammar as if it was a terribly complex and only ever half-understood formal system, and then we tag lists of exceptions onto it, and that seems to work well enough, except for people who want to go beyond successful communication into the realm of ideal correctness.

If logic is not immutable, then grammar is not immutable. So what, really, is the point?

Well, if logic is immutable, grammar still isn't immutable.

As a school unto itself, what is the point of grammar? Is it merely to record the evolution of the written language?

no.

Is to understand the brain?

No.

Is it to devise the perfect sentence?

...

NO!

To trace the differences between different written languages?

That's less point than methodology. (Though you might want to strike "written", since people also look at the grammar of languages with no writing system in place.)

I'm not sure what you mean by the "school of grammar", or by "point" to be honest. I find language fascinating, and grammar gives us a reference point to talk about it. What they teach in school to native speakers who already speak the language isn't grammar; that's superficial stylistic quibbles, or the socio-linguistic difference between native dialect and standard English - often denigrating native dialects.

Or, is like everything else -- a subjective exercise validated by subordinate theories that are also subjective exercises?

Probably that.

 

[Dawnstorm]

Oh, and just to add to the confusion, here's a linguist (co-author of the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language Geoff Pullum) agreeing with hippokrene's original intuition.

Operative quote:

The passage explicitly mentions "substituting a transitive in the active voice" for such locutions; and there is only one class of clauses that are not active already: passive clauses.

Under such a reading, Strunk is simply wrong, and that's it. I've posted my "linking verb" hypothesis there, and I'm curious if Mr Pullum will reply to it (he ignored or didn't see or didn't get around to another post of mine in a similar comment).

Note that - in a comment - Mr Pullum refers to "concealed passives", giving the example: "This thing really needs repairing by a professional." I'm really not sure about this one, but it's fascinating.

 

[the mighty pen]

hippokrene, if I may. I'm no expert, but...
I believe the problem with passive voice to be that it can become awkward when you try to make a sentence more descriptive, where as active just flows better.
Take this sentence:
The dog bit the boy.
---fine
The boy was bitten by the dog.
---doesn't sound any worse to me, but if you add stuff...
The dog sank his teeth into the flesh of the boy.
---sounds ok, and in passive...
The boy's flesh was sunken(sunk?) into by the teeth of the dog.
---pretty awkward, I think
I think this is why we're told to avoid passive. If you run into a sentence that's passive, but it's not obvious why, I wouldn't worry about it, it's probably just fine. If you can easily tell whether it's active/passive, then try to feel which way flows better.

 

[Laer Carroll]

Active and passive voice are simply two tools in our writers' toolbox. Neither is "wrong" or "bad."

Active voice focuses our reader's attention on the actor. Passive on the acted upon.

The problem with passive voice comes when we MISuse it - when using active would better suit our purposes. But the same is true of active voice - trying to force everything to active can subvert our intent.

Laer Carroll

 

[Fung Koo]

The "intuitive logic of the language" sounds to me like a pretty good paraphrase of the word "grammar".

Whereas to me it's the cognitive grouping and ordering of thoughts expressed through a socio-psychological construct we call language -- pre-grammar, if you will. Few people speak on the fly while completely preplanning their sentence structure -- that is, most people don't speak intending to comply with a rule-set. They just speak.

Some element of the rule-set (grammar) certainly gets built into the socio-psychological linguistic construct through cognitive development, but that's an element of community. In this way, grammar is simply a description of the local customs embedded in communication.

Seriously, you can't have language without grammar. How would that even work?
...
Grammar (here: in the guise of word order) is that pervasive.

It's not simply pervasive -- it's ubiquitous. Any two (or more) speaking persons will develop certain normative modes and methods of communication. Those normative modes and methods are what we call grammar.

By grammar is a hybrid. Intuitive Logic and Formal Logic combine to give us grammar -- what you're trying to express in a pure state parsed through the vocabulary and structural elements of the localized, formalized modes and methods of communication. Intuitive logic would be the neuro-physiology of thought -- it is essentially chaotic, but within the bounds of the organization of the biological machine. Formal logic would be the expression of thought within a community between multiple biological machines.

So..

I'm wondering: do you define grammar as a formal system superimposed on an empirical language?

No, not precisely.

It's a formal system in the sense that it can be described based on the empirical evidence of the expressed language. But unexpressed language (thought/pre-grammar/semantics) cannot be accounted for empirically (...yet). But grammar does not arise from rigorous adherence to a consciously agreed-upon formal system. Rather, grammar is developed organically through society/community. Hence the many variations of grammar possible in any one given language (like, say, the Gaelic variations).

That being said, though, there is the fairly recent phenomenon of Standardization.

And then there's the topic of dialects vs. Standard English (the dialect that nobody speaks naturally, but everybody's supposed to know, and which is usually based on elite usage). But that's yet another topic.

I wouldn't quite call it another topic.

We're debating here the idea of "passive voice." As an aspect of a given grammar, the passive voice can be described as both a function of a posteriori analysis based on the empirical presentation of a given sentence, and also as a pre-grammatical phenomenon of expression (rhetoric, though that's a very broad application of the term).

Someone like Strunk making the claim that the passive voice should be avoided is a rhetorical argument based on grammatical analysis (rightly or wrongly). In otherwords, it's linguistic prescription. Which is to say: Standardization.

Standardization is something that has really only arisen in the past 400 years or so -- at least as far as the modern languages go. During the colonial ages, it was noticed that the colonies were "perverting" the "pure" languages. This was interpreted (quite rightly) as a danger to the common identity of the colonists with the Empire. It was feared that this would give rise to rebellion. It did, hence American English, Australian English, Canadian English, etc. (Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, etc.).

Organic modification of the local grammar (the social structure of the language) shifted people away from the Empire. So the Empires invested butt-loads of effort into squashing those alterations. Hence the modern education system and its emphasis on standardization.

In effect, standardization is what we're really taking about here. One person says "This is the correct way to use the language." Another might ask "What language? American English? British English? Canadian English?"

I know you know this, since you say as much frequently. But then you say something like "as long as they don't engage in invalid rule transfer" and "What they teach in school to native speakers who already speak the language isn't grammar" -- and I get all in a tizzy! "Invalid rule transfer" is a linguistic impossibility, as the rules are utterly arbitrary unless one buys into the notion of a standardized, "proper" English.

Then in the same breath you say: "that's superficial stylistic quibbles, or the socio-linguistic difference between native dialect and standard English - often denigrating native dialects."

...and I get confused. What is this "standard" English? Seems to me it's a native dialect that someone (*cough*The Brits in 1750ish*cough*) decreed as the "correct" native dialect of English. "Standard English" is a misnomer. An illusion. There's not even a standard version of English in England! And suggesting that "invalid rule transfer" is even possible is to support the notion that there is a correct and incorrect mode and method to the expression of language. That grammar dictates expression, as opposed to expression dictating grammar.

That's where I get riled up.

There are other sorts of grammars, some of which border on psychology (as the grammars that derives from cognitive linguistics [Langacker etc.]).

I honestly don't see how any grammar can be divorced from psychology.

Wait a minute. A couple of steps back, and then advance slowly. Something seems off, here. To me, logic is a combination of axioms and transformation rules, which results in a formal system. Languages are not a formal systems.

Yet logic is derived from Language, so how can logic be a truly formal system? Plus, if you look at the history of logic, logics have developed differently in different cultures, so we know there is an element of sociology in logic. Therefore, it may be formal in the sense that once it is described, it is considered a formal rule system, but logic is sociologically variable and tends to exemplify only the language from which it is derived. Modern logic is a hybrid of multi-linguistic logics, so it's validity as a formal system may be compromised by its separation from its dependent linguistic origin.

And that is definitely a whole other discussion!

What they teach in school to native speakers who already speak the language isn't grammar; that's superficial stylistic quibbles, or the socio-linguistic difference between native dialect and standard English - often denigrating native dialects.

Already mentioned this bit above, but what exacty is the argument that style and grammar are independent from one another? Seems to me that grammar is wholly dependent on the customary use of a given language/language variation. Unless, of course, one adheres tho the notion of a "proper" language.

Probably that.

No doubt!

 

[Dawnstorm]

Whereas to me it's the cognitive grouping and ordering of thoughts expressed through a socio-psychological construct we call language -- pre-grammar, if you will. Few people speak on the fly while completely preplanning their sentence structure -- that is, most people don't speak intending to comply with a rule-set. They just speak.

Some element of the rule-set (grammar) certainly gets built into the socio-psychological linguistic construct through cognitive development, but that's an element of community. In this way, grammar is simply a description of the local customs embedded in communication.

I agree. They just speak. But they don't make arbitrary noises, doing so. The language predates them; they have implicit theories how it works, how they can make themselves understood and what others mean when they say stuff. Whenever they "just speak", word habits trigger, and - like all habits everywhere - they have regularities that can be studied.

These regularities are what makes a grammar. The rule-set arises from this "just speaking". By who-says-what we get dialects. By structures that don't get used we get restrictions on what's possible.

If people deviate from our formulated rule-set, they might deviate from grammar (I'm thinking of typos, but they're not grammar - they're spelling). But if they regularly and systematically deviate from our formulated rule-set, then our formulated rule-set does not adequately cover the grammar in use.

Our formulated rule-set is an hypothesis about the implied rule-set of language users. It's the latter that I call grammar.

It's not simply pervasive -- it's ubiquitous. Any two (or more) speaking persons will develop certain normative modes and methods of communication. Those normative modes and methods are what we call grammar.

Yes.

By grammar is a hybrid. Intuitive Logic and Formal Logic combine to give us grammar -- what you're trying to express in a pure state parsed through the vocabulary and structural elements of the localized, formalized modes and methods of communication. Intuitive logic would be the neuro-physiology of thought -- it is essentially chaotic, but within the bounds of the organization of the biological machine. Formal logic would be the expression of thought within a community between multiple biological machines.

I'm having problems with intuitive logic, but I don't have the time to talk deep theory, here. But what you're bringing up is interesting. Maybe some other day.

In effect, standardization is what we're really taking about here. One person says "This is the correct way to use the language." Another might ask "What language? American English? British English? Canadian English?"

Standardisation is what we're talking about when I'm claiming that "Bill was bought a car from," is correct, and you register your doubt.

Standardisation is not what we're talking about when we're trying to figure out what thoughts we should express with the passive voice. This is stylistics.

The former is about the viability ("naturalness") of a grammatical structure. Is this operation allowed in "Standard English". If your doubts pan out (by whatever methodology we use to check up on it), than I have used a grammatical structure outside of what "Standard English" offers. (And, yes, "Standard English" is an entirely social construct.)

On the other hand, if Strunk is right, then the use of passive voice makes my text boring to read. It's quite possible to bore while using impeccable grammar. Note that Strunk does have a paragraph or so on when the passive voice is useful. He couldn't do that if he thought the passive voice was ungrammatical.

I know you know this, since you say as much frequently. But then you say something like "as long as they don't engage in invalid rule transfer" and "What they teach in school to native speakers who already speak the language isn't grammar" -- and I get all in a tizzy! "Invalid rule transfer" is a linguistic impossibility, as the rules are utterly arbitrary unless one buys into the notion of a standardized, "proper" English.

But that's not true. The "rules" may be arbitrary, but they do inform language use. We sometimes screw up; typos, speakos, thinkos... We sometimes misuse grammatical structures, too.

"Invalid rule transfer" is not a linguistic impossibility. Actually, it's a fancy term for hypercorrection - second-guessing yourself because of a rule you heard. Sometimes, this will net you an ungrammatical function.

I was talking in context. What I meant above was this:

People say that in there is a "to" implied in "you" in "I give you a present." I don't see that as a useful way to look at the grammar, but it's no biggy. If it helps you make sense of grammar, by all means see the implied "to".

BUT: there are implicit rules tied up with prepositional phrases, and they are different from rules tied up with independent objects. If you suddenly start producing stuff like "I give a present you," because you see the preposition, then you've engaged in invalid rule transfer, because you're producing something you wouldn't have produced without the theoretic compendium of "to-implication".

"Invalid rule transfer," doesn't happen when you're "just speaking". It happens when you're anxious to be correct. On the one hand, you divorce yourself from the way you yourself would speak; on the other hand, you don't fully understand the rule-set you aspire to. The linguistic term is "hypercorrection". The favourite example:

Child: Pete and me went to the zoo, today.
Mom: It's 'Pete and I'.
Child: No, Pete went with me. You didn't come.
Mom: No. 'Pete and me' is incorrect. You must say 'Pete and I went to the zoo.'
Child: Oh...

[Days pass.]

Child: Mommy, Pete and m-
Mom: *Raises Eyebrow*
Child: ...Pete and I can go to the zoo again. Daddy gave eight dollars to Pete and I.

In this context, we clearly have invalid rule transfer. The usage adheres to nothing. Not the child's internal language usage, nor to the mother's rule. It's a dud.

However, that doesn't mean that "to you and I" is always automatically an instance of "invalid rule transfer". Some people might really look at these things differently:

I'll drink to you and [I'll drink to] me.
I'll drink to [you and I].

Co-ordinated noun phrases may behave differently in some people's internal grammars than the noun-phrases individually would. ("Pete and me went to the Zoo," could be an example of that. )

I do not need to buy into proper language to have invalid rule transfer. I just have to find a rule-based motivation that yields "awkward usage" for all involved. Of course, then there's problem of finding out it's really awkward...

Your tizzy doesn't surprise me.

Then in the same breath you say: "that's superficial stylistic quibbles, or the socio-linguistic difference between native dialect and standard English - often denigrating native dialects."

...and I get confused.

Heh, no wonder.

And suggesting that "invalid rule transfer" is even possible is to support the notion that there is a correct and incorrect mode and method to the expression of language. That grammar dictates expression, as opposed to expression dictating grammar.

If there were no incorrect mode, lolcats would not be funny. (Many say they're not funny, anyway, but they're wrong. )

Again, this is way to complicated for this thread. It has to do something with rule-propagation between "knowledgeable agents" (a term I have from sociology) and such, and even then there would be alternate ways to talk about this.

I honestly don't see how any grammar can be divorced from psychology.

Methodologically.

Yet logic is derived from Language, so how can logic be a truly formal system? Plus, if you look at the history of logic, logics have developed differently in different cultures, so we know there is an element of sociology in logic. Therefore, it may be formal in the sense that once it is described, it is considered a formal rule system, but logic is sociologically variable and tends to exemplify only the language from which it is derived. Modern logic is a hybrid of multi-linguistic logics, so it's validity as a formal system may be compromised by its separation from its dependent linguistic origin.

I simply don't undertand this. Maybe I have a too narrow definition of logic to make sense of this, but you're right: "... that is definitely a whole other discussion!"

Already mentioned this bit above, but what exacty is the argument that style and grammar are independent from one another? Seems to me that grammar is wholly dependent on the customary use of a given language/language variation. Unless, of course, one adheres tho the notion of a "proper" language.

Take split infinitives. To me, this is not a grammatical issue, but a stylistic issue. Why? Native speakers split infinitives all the time with no noticable adverse effect on communication. It is possible to speak and write without using split infinitives, and to choose to do so is a choice.

Then we have SVO. English does not allow OVS. A sentence like "The cat ate the rat," is not ambiguous. Neither is "The tomato ate the boy." We know that - in the real world - tomatoes rarely eat people, but this doesn't lead us to re-interpret this sentence. If the more conventional meaning is what I intended, I ****ed up. I can attempt to make clear my meaning, by stress patterns, say, or by conversational implicature:

The tomato ate the boy. The cucumber is still on the table.
​

That is: I can attempt to use this unusual word order and still get my point across, if I'm determined. But the resistance I face is... harsh.

And the resistance I face is not a matter of pigheaded grammarians who insist on minor quibbles, either. It's that hosts of native speakers are trained on SVO since the beginning. There are special deviations, such as "Prepositonal phrase + V + S" ("On the mat sat a cat."), but OVS is not one of those.

Take both together, and you can start arguing that English is more of an analytic language (expressing ideas via separate words) than a synthetic language (expressing ideas through afixation to word-roots), and that word order is thus an important feature of English (in a way that it isn't in say - Latin). Not only does this hinder people to place the object before the verb, it also splits the infinitive from "one word" (latin) into two words, allowing additional transactions. Like all hypotheses, I'd have to find a way to test it (and others will find plenty of ways to contest the testing). But there is a difference between style and grammar. It's just not always easy to pin-point, and sometimes people disagree about the attribution.

However, The Elements of Style does not teach grammar. In fact, it assumes that you know your grammar before reading the book. Strunk doesn't tell you what the active voice is. He assumes you know how to identify it, construct it etc. The lack of grammar in this booklet is one of the worst problems, actually. If "use the active voice" and "don't use the passive voice" are synonymous, his section makes no sense. If there's a difference, he didn't give us enough clues to figure them out. This is why we have this thread in the first place.

To me, grammar describes how a language works. Style chooses between alternate ways to express ideas; but to choose between alternate ways they have to be there in the first place. Or differently put: the same general principle that keeps split infinitives around keeps OVS-sentences from appearing.