Hi, dear teachers.
Could you please tell me how we should transform the sentence ‘Joe takes good care of his mother’ into a passive voice?
‘Good care is taken of his mother’ or ‘his mother is taken good care of’?
If the fomer is correct and ‘good care’ is supposed to be the object, what role then does ‘of his mother’ play in the sentence? Is it the adverbial?
By the way, how does it distinguish from ‘with sth’ in the phrase’ provide sb with sth’?
I know they are very weird questions, but I do hope you can help me figure them out.
His mother is taken good care of.
I thought so but a professor’s reference to my textbook said it’s ‘good care is taken care of his mother’.
Then it’s probably wrong.
To my mind, you can say “Extra care should be taken in handling hazardous materials”.
Maybe someone else will chime in with their ideas. I’m not a native speaker.
"Good care is taken of his mother " is correct.
- object of the “active” sentence: Good care
- subject of the “active” sentence: Joe
- His mother is the second object.
It’s a kind of " Passive sentences with two objects "
I think this is wrong for the same reason these are:
A fool was made of me.
Advantage was taken of me.
Instead we say:
I was made a fool of.
I was taken advantage of.
I was taken care of.
Our Tort, I am not a native speaker, So I don’t insist on my answer, but I think your examples are wrong. We have some sentences that have two objects. What do you think about below sentence?
-" A letter was written to me by him."
and look at those Active sentences:
- I wrote him a letter of recommendation.
- Michael has not sent me a text message
Even we can make passive in two ways. each time use one of two objects. How do you make those sentences passive? - The teacher told us a joke.
- I gave him five rupees.
Hi guys, thanks for your replies, but mellow out a little, hoho. Porandokht, yeah, i agree on your point that some sentences have two objects which are called the direct object and the indirect object, but i think they may be different from the ‘take care of’ phrase.
Predicate verbs taking double objects are limited in number i guess, verbs like buy, bring, give, send, and offer,etc. Their Od and Oi are optional, that is, we can say,
—I bought my mother a bunch of flower.
—I bought Ed a new set of video game.
However, we just can’t trade another word for ‘care’ in the phrase ‘take care of’, right?
Now, i guess ‘take care of’ can be treated as a transtive verb which takes ‘his mother’ as its object. But i am still not sure what its passive voice is and what role ‘care’ plays here.
By the way, where are our dear teachers?
Esme, I agree with you. “Care” is usually not an object here. “Take care of” is idiomatic, and I find “care” to be as valid a direct object as “shape” in “take shape” or “form” in “take form.” Neither functions as a traditional noun; they alter the meaning of the verb altogether without cleanly fitting into a single word category, like the particles of phrasal verbs. “Of his mother” surely isn’t adverbial, as it does not tell us how, when, where, why, or to what degree he does the caring. It tells us who or what receives the action, like direct objects. It is also impossible to make a grammatical sentence without such a phrase.
I do not believe a native speaker would make such a sentence passive, as the modifier “good” makes both choices too awkward to bear. I would say that splitting the idiom “take care of” is usually a poor choice, apart from merely modifying “care.”
Tort’s last three sentences are natural and good.
You seem well taken care of.
But not
Care seems well taken of you.
Having said that, these feel quite normal:
I assure you that due care was taken.
Little care was taken to ensure that he would be safe.
And I do feel that “care” is a valid object here. Notice also that we do not even need to say what received the care. The care itself is effectively receiving the action without the thought feeling incomplete or illogical. “Take” acts more like “provide” or “deliver” here. And adding the “of + noun” would actually make the sentences ugly.
I do not think this overall compares well to ditransitive verbs, those that take direct and indirect objects simultaneously. “He takes care” is simply incomplete, but “He sent a message” is perfect. When those verbs take indirect objects, no preposition is needed, but the indirect objects can be “folded out” and used behind “to” or “for.” Neither preposition expresses the relationship that the nontraditional “of” expresses here. Nothing was done to something else and then given to the mother. Nothing was done to something else for her, either.
He bought her a car. - The car was bought and then given to her.
Would you really say “Care was taken and then given to her”? That’s not quite the same thing.
Mordant
Am I correct in paraphrasing the second and third sentences of your answer thus, please?:
“Care” is considered by most grammarians not to be an object in this construction. “Take care of” is idiomatic, and I find “care” here to be as valid a direct object as “shape” in “take shape” or “form” in “take form” - ie it should not be considered as a direct object.
You then go on to say:
Neither [shape nor form - nor indeed care] functions [in these constructions] as a traditional noun; they alter the meaning of the verb altogether without cleanly fitting into a single word category, like the particles of phrasal verbs.
I’ve been looking for an analysis - or even a mention - on the Internet, of such constructions as you are citing here. There seem to be quite a few verb + noun group constructions (I’ll avoid the term collocations as different authorities use it in confusingly different ways), which can hardly be classed as verb + direct object (eg kick the cat), delexical verb + semantically meaningful object (eg have/take a bath), or verb + adverbial objective (eg walk a mile). Yours is the first treatment of them that I’ve come across, though I have seen a brief mention of ‘verb + fixed noun idioms’. Examples are catch fire, do time, lose face, take place. As you say, they do seem to be analogous to the idiomatic verb-plus-particle/s constructions (again, I’m steering clear of nomenclature) - they are probably best regarded syntactically as poly-word units rather than larger grammatical arrays, and semantically have single-concept meanings (best illustrated by considering those which have single-word equivalents - eg catch fire = ignite; take place = occur) different from the sum of their apparent parts. Again like verb + particle/s constructions, there are ‘transitive’ examples: catch sight of; the original example in the thread, take care of - compare play down, stick up for.
There are, in addition, just a few examples of verb + verb constructions which behave as single verbs, eg let go (of), let/leave (sb) be, let fly (at), make do (with). I’ve seen all poly-word assemblages that ‘behave like a single-word verb’ (in someone’s opinion!) referred to as multi-word verbs, but I’ve also seen that term used in other, more restrictive senses.
I wonder if you could point me to any article with a reasonably comprehensive list of such idioms, perhaps even with an attempt at analysis? Thanks for the help in crystallising thoughts you’ve already provided.
Edwin Ashworth
Happy New Year.
I’ve come across
MULTI-WORD VERBS IN EARLY MODERN ENGLISH. A Corpus-based Study
by:Claudia CLARIDGE
which seems to have a thorough analysis of all subsets of multi-word verbs, including crits of earlier analyses. Of course, crits of this thesis point out that it is not itself without room for improvement; the work does, however, contain large corpus-derived lists of verb + particle/s, verb + adjective, and verbo-nominal constructions. I’ll have to order the book via our local library, though, as there is only a fraction freely available on the Web.
I’ll explore more of the site here as soon as I’ve got this particular bee out of my bonnet. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Wordwizard website, where there is some very fine work done researching etymology (and contrastingly bad ‘work’ on inventing dire new puns). Grammar debates are often very complicated, as you might expect.
Again, success and happiness in the New Year,
Edwin Ashworth.