Delahunty and Garvey
d. The pretzels were eaten.
As a general rule, passive sentences have active counterparts, although a
missing agent phrase may have to be expressed as an indefinite pronoun:
(46) a. The baby-sitter fed the children.
b. The mice ate the pretzels.
c. Someone fed the children.
d. Someone/something ate the pretzels.
The active subject corresponds to the NP in the passive by-phrase, and the
passive subject corresponds to either a direct or indirect object in the active:
(47) a. The package was sent to Amanda.
b. Amanda was sent the package.
Or occasionally to the object of a preposition:
(48) My bed has been slept in.In the kind of analysis we are using here, the deep structures of synony-
mous active and passive sentences are taken to be identical, and the passive
transformation (a) creates the by-phrase, (b) moves the subject NP into it,
(c) moves the direct object NP into the now-vacant subject position, (d) in-
serts the verb be, and (e) changes the morphology of the verb to the passive
participle form. The deep structure of (45b) and (46b) is:
(49)a. SNP AUX VP
DET N V NP
DET N
The mice ate the pretzels