Grammar Series - Passive Infinitives

[Music] hello everyone and welcome to maple leaf ESL my name is Andrew and thank you for joining me here in the classroom today for today's grammar lesson I want to take a look at passive infinitive okay this is an important grammar point and I want to take a look at why okay first I put here what is an infinitive ok if you don't know or don't remember well i put it up here infinitive is 2 + base verb ok so for example that looks like to go to see or to do okay that is a to infinitive remember we also have what's called a zero infinitive a zero infinitive is just the base verb with no 2 so that would be go see or do ok alright i also put up your verb + ing that is called a gerund ok and that looks like going seeing or doing for example ok that is not what we're going to be using today so we're going to be using the infinitive ok also what is the passive ok well I wrote an example sentence I helped him ok notice it's our basic structure subject + verb + object so that is what's known as the active voice ok now the passive voice he was helped notice that the object becomes the subject ok then we need be in some form in this case it's the past tense was ok and then we need our past participle helped remember the past participle is that third verb in our grammar structure ok so for example eat eight eaten take took taken right get got gotten right to that eat and take and gotten that's our past participle so we also need that when we're using the passive okay let's see if we can take a look at some passive infinitive ok so let's take a look up here i wrote to be plus the past participle ok so with the passive voice we need to you use this structure okay let's take a look at some examples okay the first one here my mom told me to hurry up ok so again this is the active voice we again we can see here there's the subject my mom our verb told ok notice here also we have an object between the infinitive and the verb right told me to hurry up ok now if we put that as a passive infinitive it's going to look like this I was told to hurry up ok and again notice here the object me becomes the new subject right as is always true with the passive voice then we have be in the form of was there's our past participle told and then our infinitive to hurry up ok notice to also if i want to include the subject which was my mom i can put that in a by phrase right which again is common in the passive voice so i was told to hurry up by my mom right but remember in the passive voice a lot of the time it's not important to say who did it right it's only important to say what the action was and in this case the action is I was told to hurry up right that's the action that's the important part ok another example the teacher allowed me to go to the bathroom ok again here same thing we got our subject our verb and our object plus our infinitive ok and once again the object is between the verb and the infinitive ok now our passive infinitive I was allowed to go to the bathroom and again there by the teacher if we want to keep the subject ok once again our object becomes our new subject then followed by be in the past tense of was our past participle and again our infinitive ok let's see if we can continue looking at a few more examples ok looking up here I wrote some verbs cannot be used in the passive okay and this is always true some verbs can only be used in the active voice so for example here my mother let me go outside okay remember my mother let me is the same meaning as my mother allowed me which I used in the example from before okay but if we try and put that in the passive voice I was let to go outside okay that does not work we cannot say this in English right so in other words some verbs cannot use in the passive here's a short list love live let hate dislike prefer wish and so on right so we cannot use those in the passive we can only use those verbs in the active voice okay I put your next infinitives of purpose right so if we want to say the reason for something right or the purpose of doing something this is called an infinitive of purpose so if we look here at the active voice the company designed the camera to be waterproof ok again subject verb object notice the company designed the camera in order to be waterproof or in order for it to be waterproof but we don't have to say in order in this sentence right we go directly to the infinitive and it has the same meaning now in the passive voice the camera was designed to be waterproof okay in that example we're showing the reason that the camera was designed but as with the passive voice we're dropping the subject right and we're only telling you the action that it was designed to be waterproof right so that is an infinitive of purpose okay I want to look at one last thing before we finish up looking at the top there I wrote infinitive after wh okay think about WH words right what where when why and how okay if we look here the instructor showed me what to do okay so that's our active voice okay if we switch it into the passive voice I will shown what to do by the instructor ok so again we taking the object made our new subject we've got be our past participle and here we have our wh word right so I was shown what to do there's our infinitive by the instructor okay so we can also use that WH in the infinitive and with the passive as well okay and last thing I want to look at here using pronouns as the subject okay if we look in another sentence people say that he is a vegetarian okay this is a common sentence that we use when we talk about sort of rumors or things we think are true maybe we heard them somewhere right so people say it right people say that he's a vegetarian maybe I don't know for sure ok this is commonly used in the passive so we could change that too he is said to be a vegetarian okay it's just an alternative way to say it if we think about that subject people say that he is a vegetarian it's not very specific and it's not very important to that sentence because of course its people right it's not animals or birds that are saying it so clearly its people so the subject is not important so he is said to be a vegetarian notice we could use the by phrase of by people but it's really not necessary right it really does not change anything okay and one more example they believe her to be a murderer okay again who is they it's not very specific so again you can change that to the passive she is believed to be a murderer okay by who well by someone again by them but we don't really know who is so it's just as good to say she is believed to be a murder so using that passive infinitive to help us explain it okay without worrying about the subject okay that is the end of today's lesson I hope I made the passive infinitive clearer and easy to understand thank you so much for joining me here at Maple Leaf ESL and I look forward to seeing you again next time [Music]

Channel: Maple Leaf ESL

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Keywords: ESL, English, Study, Learn, Teacher, Teachers, Student, Students, Education, Language, Lesson, Online, Free, Maple, Leaf, Lessons, School, grammar, english grammar, infinitives, gerunds, passive voice, active voice, passive infinitives, how to use passive infinitives, using passive voice, it is said, he is said to, she is said to

Id: 9SezplVOG8Y

Length: 9min 0sec (540 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 22 2019