LL-L: "Grammar" LOWLANDS-L, 09.FEB.2000 (01) [E]

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From: john feather <johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk>
Subject: Grammar

I think it was Eldo who asked about "me was told". The simple answer is
"Roger got it wrong", but that raises the interesting question "Why?"

I assume that Roger is a Dutch speaker and in Dutch (as in German,
Norwegian, Swedish, French, ...) an indirect object of an active sentence
cannot be used as the subject if the sentence is put into the passive form.
(My Swedish grammar book says this is true "as a rule" [ie generally], but
irritatingly does not specify any exceptions.) So "me was told" is plausibly
a translation of "mij werd gezegd", or something similar. In English we are
not so constrained.

John Feather johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk

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