Intransitive and passive construction, I really need help...
The people are being lied to.
When I tried to write this I wrote
Están siendo mintiendo
but I knew it wouldn't work because it sounds weird.
I have been told the reason is because mentir - to lie is an intransitive verb and I have to change it to a passive construction instead
"se le éstá mintiendo a la gente"
I was wondering how you are supposed to know that the intransitive verb can't be used this way. I mean, who is to say it is correct or not and how do yo know to change it to passive?
8 Answers
La chica lucha con su hermano
Correct.
Su hermano se lucha
What is that supposed to mean? You can't use intransitive verbs for passive constructions.
In sentences constructed in the active voice, intransitivity indicates that you should not expect to see a direct object in the sentence so that the complement–i.e. what is being lied about–is generally introduced by a prepositional phrase (usually sobre or acerca de); whereas, the person or people being lied to are represented by the indirect object.
Le mienten a la gente (sobre el dinero) ? They are lying to the people (about the money).
By using the verb "estar," this statement can be changed to the progressive (perífrasis durativa) to emphasize that the act of "lying" is an action in progress. Note that the indirect object is still used to describe who exactly is being lied to.
Le están mintiendo a la gente ? They are lying to the people.
If I am not mistaken, it seems that what you were trying to do was take this type of construction and make a passive sentence by including the verb "ser:"
As Lazarus has pointed out, such a sentence means nothing in Spanish, just as its equivalent would mean nothing in English:
While I understand what you were attempting, it must be pointed out that there were two errors made in this attempt.
1). When forming a passive sentence this way, it is necessary to use the past participial form of your main verb. You might note that the past participle of "mentir" is "mentido" and not "mintiendo" (even so, such a construction, as far as I know, would still not have been possible—see #2 below). To form a passive construction in this manner, one would simply take the conjugated form of the verb ser followed by the past participle of your main verb as shown here:
?El libro fue escrito (por mi abuelita). ? The book was written (by my grandma).
?La cena es preparada (por mi madre) ? Dinner is prepared (by my mother).
2). One thing that is interesting about passively constructed sentences of this nature (in both English and Spanish) is that they are formed by converting the direct object (the target of the action) of an active sentence (as in "My grandma wrote the book" where "the book" is the target of the action) into the subject of the passive sentences (compare "My mother prepares dinner" with "Dinner is prepared by my mother). The former subject of such sentences (often referred to as the agent or initiator of the event) is introduced by the preposition "por/by" and is optional (i.e. it can be omitted as in "The book was written" and "Dinner is prepared").
What should be noted about this type of conversion is that, generally, a direct object is required in order for it to occur. What this means is that verbs which by their nature do not normally carry an indirect object (i.e. intransitive verbs) are usually not amenable to such constructions. What this means is that even had you used the past participle rather than the gerundio, the sentence (from my understanding) still would have sounded strange:
To get around this limitation of intransitive verbs (i.e. when there is no agent), Spanish employs what is often termed "the impersonal se." Impersonal sentences which might match what you are trying to say might be:
Links are provided so that you might see how expressions similar to these have been used in various periodicals.
For further reading, you might also be interested in this reference article by Lazarus which deals with this exact topic: Impersonal and Passive Sentences
You could use a synonym for "mentir":
The people are being lied to.
Las personas están siendo engañadas.
The dictionary on this page has
to lie
no me mientas -> don't lie to me
miente más que habla -> he's a born liar
esas estadísticas mienten, porque no tienen en cuenta… -> those statistics give a false picture o are misleading, because they don't take into account…
llovía, miento, granizaba cuando nos preparábamos para salir -> it was raining, I tell a lie, it was hailing as we were getting ready to leave
I hope this is helpful.
Están siendo mintiendo
This means nothing in Spanish.
I have been told the reason is because mentir - to lie is an intransitive verb and I have to change it to a passive construction instead
That's right.
I was wondering how you are supposed to know that the intransitive verb can't be used this way. I mean, who is to say it is correct or not and how do yo know to change it to passive?
The rule works in nearly 99% of the cases (there are two exceptions): the direct object becomes the subject of a passive sentence. If you check the DRAE, it says that it is an intransitive verb for most meanings.
So then if in the dictionary I see that a verb is intransitive and I say to myself, this isn't going to work like normal transitive constructions. So what I have to do it
- analyse the sentence and find the direct object pronoun in the active sentence
What you are missing is that if a verb is intransitive, this means that it will not have a direct object.
If you are confused about transitive vs intransitive, try having a look a the following verbs (with direct object bolded) and see if you can tell the difference:
| Transitive | Intransitive |
| I ate soup | I laughed |
| I hit the wall | I fell |
| I read the book | I cried |
Notice that in order to place one of these expressions after an intransitive verb requires the use of a prepositional phrase:
?I laughed at the book
?I fell from the wall
?I cried about the soup
When the verb is transitive; however, it is not necessary that a preposition intervene between the verb and its object, and some interchangeability is possible:
?I hit the soup
?I hit the book
?I ate the book
?I read the soup
Notice that in some cases (i.e. I read the soup), interchangeability is limited by semantic rather than syntactic relationships. The main idea to take away from this, however, is that when there is a direct object, the action of the verb is falling directly upon this entity (i.e. no intervening preposition).
intransitive verb - luchar
The girl fights her brother active and the Direct odj. pron. is her brother
So far you are correct; however, there is one problem with your analogy. You are using the verb "fight" transitively in your English sentence. In Spanish, such a transitive construction does not exist.
If you wanted to make a proper analogy, you would need to use an example which makes use of "fight" in an intransitive construction. This could be accomplished by changing your example sentence to one of the following:
?The girl fights against her brother.
?The girl fights with her brother.
Now using one of these, you might make a better comparison with your Spanish Example:
La chica lucha con su hermano
Now, hopefully it might be clear to you that because you are using a prepositional phrase, forming a passive sentence would not be possible:
?*Her brother fought the girl against.
?*Against her brother fought the girl.
While it is conceivable that either of the sentences above might be used in poetic constructions (hence the expression, "poetic license"), it should be clear that in prose and in speaking such constructions are to be avoided (unless of course your name happens to be Yoda and "within you strong is the force.")
Están siendo mentidos - they are being lied to, it doesn't work because it's intransitive but I still can't see how this compares to what you are tlling me above.
It might help to recognize that this does not translate to "They are being lied to." It translates to "They are being lied." The preposition "to" is not part of the verb but accompanies the indirect object. In English, the verb "lie" is considered intransitive, too; however, this construction appears to me to be somewhat of an idiom (i.e. it goes against typical rules of grammar) in that the sentence ends in a preposition. We can also learn something about this verb by comparing it in a similar set of expression which use a ditransitive verb (a verb which takes both a direct and indirect object):
1). He told them a lie (He lied to them) [active voice]
2). A lie was told to them (*Was lied to them) [passive d.o. as subject]
3). They were told a lie (They were lied to by him) [passive i.o. as subject]
In the above set of sentences, you might have noticed that in one of the sentences (3), it seems as though the indirect object was actually promoted to the role of subject. The process which allows this in English is what is known as a "dative shift," and generally only occurs in ditransitive verbs. Using the sentence given in the link as an example, you can see how such a process can allow the indirect object to be promoted to subject:
| Active | He gave a present to me |
| Passive | A present was given to me |
| Active after Dative Shift | He gave me a present |
| Passive after Dative Shift | I was given a present |
To my knowledge, Spanish does not allow such a process, so in general, I would assume that trying to impose a similarly constructed sentence on Spanish would result in ungrammaticality.
Normally (as far as I know) promotion of an indirect object to subject does not occur in intransitive verbs, and as I mentioned before, this occurrence with the verb "to lie" appears to be somewhat idiomatic. This can be seen when we compare the verb "to lie" to other similar intransitive verbs and to an intransitive verb which does not take an indirect object.
| Active | He lied to John | He complained to John | He ran to John | He fell to the ground |
| Passive | John was lied to | John was complained to | John was run to | The ground was fallen to |
While the acceptability of such utterances is probably somewhat variable, it does seem (at least to me) that the stranding of the preposition "to" at the end of the sentence may be more acceptable when the verb in question is related to the act of speaking (i.e. I was lied to, I was spoken to, I was complained to, I was whispered to). Even so, many of these constructions still appear somewhat questionable to my eyes.
The rule works in nearly 99% of the cases (there are two exceptions): the direct object becomes the subject of a passive sentence. If you check the DRAE, it says that it is an intransitive verb for most meanings.
So then if in the dictionary I see that a verb is intransitive and I say to myself, this isn't going to work like normal transitive constructions. So what I have to do it
- analyse the sentence and find the direct object pronoun in the active sentence
- change the sentence around and make it passive
- Put the direct object pronoun of the active sentence as the subject of the new passive sentence.
example
intransitive verb - luchar
The girl fights her brother active and the Direct odj. pron. is her brother
Her brother was fought DOP becomes new subject in this passive sentence
La chica lucha con su hermano
Su hermano se lucha
Do these spanish constructions make sense? and is this what you were refering to?
So my example was this
Están siendo mentidos - they are being lied to, it doesn't work because it's intransitive but I still can't see how this compares to what you are tlling me above.
sigh
So in spanish I know it is favourable to avoid the passive construction "ser+ past participle and instead you use the "impersonal se". My question is:
With the impersonal Se is it common to ommit the "por" which introduces an agent? or is it ok to add it whenever you want?
