I get confused about meaning and using verb to sit and to seat for instance I sit near the window and I see the man who is seated near the window.Is there any difference between the two sentences
Is it right that verb to seat have more passive meaning than to sit
Please explain it for me. Thank’s a lot
This is a bit of a tangle.
“sit” is usually intransitive: “I sat near the window”, “I was sitting near the window”, etc.
“seat” is always transitive: “She seated me near the window”.
In some cases, “sit” can be transitive, with essentially the same meaning as “seat” (though with potentially slightly different nuance and range of usages): “She sat me near the window.”
When no agent is mentioned, the passive form of “seat” can lose some of its verbal quality and become more adjectival (similar to many other verbs). So, in “He was seated near the window” there may be a greater or lesser emphasis on the fact that somebody seated him there. In one extreme, the meaning is effectively the same as “He was sitting near the window”.
The passive form of transitive “sit” overlaps with a common nonstandard or dialect form of the intransitive meaning whereby, for example, “He was sat” means “He was sitting”. Therefore “He was sat near the window” could mean that somebody sat (seated) him there, but more often (certainly in BrE) would be understood as a nonstandard way of saying “He was sitting near the window”.
Thank you for your explanation .Now I have a new understanding for that matter