Putting It Together

Miscellaneous

This page adds four topics to the earlier pages. They are passive sentences with a by phrase, the four verb types, two verbs that share one object, and what neither view can show.

What you’ll learn

Diagram a passive sentence and find its agent in both views
Classify a verb as linking, intransitive, monotransitive or ditransitive
Recognise two verbs that share one object
Name four things that neither view can show

Passives and their agent

In a passive sentence the subject receives the action. Often the doer is not named: The window was broken. When the doer is named, it comes in a by phrase: The window was broken by hail.

That by phrase names the agent, the doer of the action. In the active sentence the doer is the subject: Hail broke the window. Reed-Kellogg draws the by phrase as an ordinary prepositional phrase under the verb. The dependency parse gives by its own relation, agent (see Core Arguments).

Check the verb form
A passive is be plus a past participle: was broken, had been cleaned. Be plus an -ing form is different: was breaking is progressive, not passive. A passive can also be perfect: had been cleaned is past perfect and passive (see Aspect).
Confirm the subject is not acting
The window did not break anything; it was broken.
Diagram the by-phrase as an ordinary phrase
Hang it below the verb: by on a slanted line, hail on a horizontal line.

“The window was broken by hail.”

Reed-Kellogg — the agent is an ordinary prepositional phrase

det Determiner
nsubjpass Passive nominal subject
auxpass Passive auxiliary
ROOT Root of the sentence
agent Agent (passive)
pobj Object of preposition

Dependency — nsubjpass and agent name what the diagram cannot

Comparing the two views

Reed-Kellogg gives the agent no special mark: by hail hangs under the verb like any prepositional phrase. The tree shows the passive in its labels: window is nsubjpass, not nsubj, and by is agent, not prep. But the parser chooses the label by form, not by meaning. In The window was fixed by Tuesday, by is an agent too, though Tuesday is a time, not a doer.

The four verb types

The Verb type filter in the Practice Lab finds sentences by the type of their verbs. It appears once you sign in. Each verb gets one of four types, decided by what comes after it in that sentence. So the type belongs to how the verb is used, not to the verb itself. In the first two rows of the table below, shattered is intransitive and then monotransitive.

Type	Takes	Example
Intransitive	nothing	The window shattered.
Monotransitive	a direct object	Hail shattered the window.
Ditransitive	a direct and an indirect object	She showed me the crack.
Linking	a complement describing the subject	The window looks fragile.

Take one verb at a time
Each verb gets its own type, even when two verbs share one subject.
Check for a passive
A passive verb is monotransitive, even with nothing after it: its object has become the subject. The window was broken.
Try the equals test
If subject = the word after the verb is true, the verb is linking: window = fragile. When be is the main verb, it is always linking, even when a place follows: Marta is at home.
Count the objects
Ask what? or whom? after the verb. If nothing answers, the verb is intransitive. If one object answers, it is monotransitive. If an indirect object comes before that object, it is ditransitive: She showed me the crack. A measure such as an hour in waited an hour is not an object (see Adverbial Objectives).

Two verbs, one object

Take Barbara mowed and watered the lawn. It means that she mowed the lawn and watered the lawn: two verbs joined by and share one object.

This is hard for a parser. In the dependency tree only watered has an object; mowed has none, so it looks intransitive. The tree is not wrong: each word in a tree has only one head, so the lawn cannot belong to both verbs. In Grammify, an editor marks mowed as transitive, and the diagram then closes the fork before the object.

“Nina peeled and sliced the apples.”

Reed-Kellogg — the fork closes before the shared object

nsubj Nominal subject
ROOT Root of the sentence
cc Coordinating conjunction
conj Conjunct
det Determiner
dobj Direct object

Dependency — apples has one head, sliced; peeled has no object

Comparing the two views

Reed-Kellogg closes the fork before the object, so apples belongs to both verbs. The tree cannot say that: apples has one head, sliced (dobj), and peeled has no object at all. Here the diagram shows something the tree cannot.

What neither view can show

Neither view shows everything. Grammify’s tree and diagram both miss these four things.

Idioms. put up with means one thing: tolerate. But both views take it apart. The tree makes up a particle (prt) and with a preposition with its own object. Grammify’s diagram writes only put in the verb slot.
Ellipsis. In She can swim, and he can too, the second clause leaves out swim. The tree has no node for it. A traditional diagram marks a missing verb with an x, but Grammify’s diagram does not fill one in: it writes only can in the second verb slot.
Ambiguity. I saw the man with the telescope has two meanings: I used the telescope, or the man had it. Each view can draw only one of them. Grammify’s parser chose the second: with hangs from man.
Meaning. Both describe structure only. Neither can tell you whether a sentence is true, or kind, or well written.

Quick check

Is The film was made by students a passive sentence? Where do the Reed-Kellogg diagram and the dependency tree put by students?
Answer
Yes: was made is be plus a past participle, and the subject, film, receives the action (active: Students made the film). Reed-Kellogg hangs by students under was made like any prepositional phrase. In the tree, by is agent, not prep; students is its pobj, and film is nsubjpass.
Give the verb type of each verb: (a) The children laughed. (b) The soup tastes salty. (c) Diego sent his sister a photo. (d) Priya showed the map to her friend.
Answer
(a) Intransitive: nothing answers laughed what? (b) Linking: soup = salty. (c) Ditransitive: a photo is the direct object, and his sister, with no preposition, is the indirect object. (d) Monotransitive: the map is the only object; to her friend is a prepositional phrase.
In Omar washed and ironed the shirts, which verb has shirts as its object in the dependency tree? Do both verbs share the object?
Answer
In the tree only ironed has an object: shirts is its dobj, and washed has none. But the object is shared: Omar washed the shirts and ironed the shirts keeps the meaning. A Reed-Kellogg diagram shows this by closing the fork before shirts.
Priya photographed the woman with the camera. has two meanings. Can one Reed-Kellogg diagram or one dependency tree show both?
Answer
No. Each drawing hangs with the camera from one word. Under photographed, Priya used the camera; under woman, the woman had it. Grammify’s parser chose the first: with is a prep of photographed. Each meaning needs its own drawing.

Key terms

Agent: The doer in a passive sentence, named in a by phrase. In the tree, by has the relation agent. The road was flooded by the storm. The letter was signed by the mayor.
See: Sentence Types & Voice · Core Arguments
Transitivity: How many objects a verb takes in a given sentence: none (intransitive), one (monotransitive) or two (ditransitive). A linking verb takes a complement instead. She slept. — none. She read the letter. — one. She gave him the letter. — two.
See: Articles, Adjectives & Objects · Indirect Objects & Complements
Shared object: One direct object that belongs to two verbs joined by and. A tree gives the object only one head, so an editor marks the sharing by hand. Barbara mowed and watered the lawn. He washed and dried the plates.
See: Imperatives & Conjunctions · Dependency Parsing
Ellipsis: Leaving out words that the reader can understand from the words around them. The tree never adds them. Reed-Kellogg marks some with an x (the understood you, a left-out that), but Grammify does not yet fill in a missing verb. She can sing, and he can too. — sing is missing after the second can. Some left early, others late. — the verb left is missing before late.

Practice on a real sentence

This sentence shares one object in another way. The queen is the direct object of knows and also the object of with after corresponds. In the Roles exercise, the queen takes both labels: Direct object and Object of preposition. In the Dependencies exercise, queen has one head, with, because each word in a tree has only one head.

Loading the practice sentence…