Exercise 2

All the verbs in the following sentences are transitive verbs in the active form. Rewrite each sentence, putting the verb into the passive form and making the object of the active verb the subject of the passive verb; as, for example, the first sentence should be rewritten as follows:

War on Russia was declared by Germany on August 1, 1914.

  1. Germany declared war on Russia, August 1, 1914.
  2. Who will sign the Emancipation Proclamation of the Proletariat?
  3. Marx and Engels wrote the Communist Manifesto.
  4. Spain murdered Francisco Ferrer, October 13, 1909.
  5. We celebrate the first of May as International Labor Day.
  6. The people of Paris stormed the Bastille, July 14, 1789.
  7. Wat Tyler was leading the English workers in rebellion against the King when the Mayor of London stabbed him in 1381.
  8. The Inquisition burned Bruno at the stake for heresy in 1600.
  9. The Paris Commune followed the German siege of Paris in 1871.

SUMMARY

145. Now let us take the verb see and name all the time forms which we can describe with the changes in the verb forms which we have learned to make and also with the verb phrases which we can construct with the help of the verbs, be, have, shall and will.

First, we want to express the present, what is happening now, and we want to put it in both the active and passive forms, so we say:

PRESENT TIME
Active Passive
Singular Singular
I see. I am seen.
You see. You are seen.
He sees. He is seen.
Plural Plural
We see. We are seen.
You see. You are seen.
They see. They are seen.

Note that the only change in the verb form in the present ACTIVE is the s-form for the third person singular. In the present passive the only change is the special form of the verb be for the first and third persons, singular.

When we want to tell what occurred yesterday or some time in the past, stated in the active and passive form, we say:

PAST TIME
Active Passive
Singular Singular
I saw. I was seen.
You saw. You were seen.
He saw. He was seen.
Plural Plural
We saw. We were seen.
You saw. You were seen.
They saw. They were seen.

We have one other division of time which we must express—the future. Primitive man doubtless lived principally in the present, but with the development of memory and the means of recording events by a written language, he was able to make the deeds and achievements of the past a vital part of his life. But not until the faculty of thinking developed was the mind able to project itself into the future and make tomorrow the hope of today. Future time expresses hope, desire, growth.

FUTURE TIME
Active Passive
Singular Singular
I shall see. I shall be seen.
You will see. You will be seen.
He will see. He will be seen.
Plural Plural
We shall see. We shall be seen.
You will see. You will be seen.
They will see. They will be seen.

Then you remember we had to devise a way of describing an action perfected or completed at the present or at some time in the past or at some time in the future—so we have present perfect, past perfect and future perfect.

PRESENT PERFECT
Active Passive
Singular Singular
I have seen. I have been seen.
You have seen. You have been seen.
He has seen. He has been seen.
Plural Plural
We have seen. We have been seen.
You have seen. You have been seen.
They have seen. They have been seen.
PAST PERFECT
Active Passive
Singular Singular
I had seen. I had been seen.
You had seen. You had been seen.
He had seen. He had been seen.
Plural Plural
We had seen. We had been seen.
You had seen. You had been seen.
They had seen. They had been seen.
FUTURE PERFECT
Active Passive
Singular Singular
I shall have seen. I shall have been seen.
You will have seen. You will have been seen.
He will have seen. He will have been seen.
Plural Plural
We shall have seen. We shall have been seen.
You will have seen. You will have been seen.
They will have seen. They will have been seen.

146. But these are not all the phases of time which we can express. We have progressive, continuous action. So each of these six time forms has a progressive form.

PRESENT PROGRESSIVE
Active Passive
Singular Singular
I am seeing. I am being seen.
You are seeing. You are being seen.
He is seeing. He is being seen.
Plural Plural
We are seeing. We are being seen.
You are seeing. You are being seen.
They are seeing. They are being seen.
PAST PROGRESSIVE
Active Passive
Singular Singular
I was seeing. I was being seen.
You were seeing. You were being seen.
He was seeing. He was being seen.
Plural Plural
We were seeing. We were being seen.
You were seeing. You were being seen.
They were seeing. They were being seen.

Only the Present and Past Progressive forms have a passive form. The rest of the Progressive forms are expressed in the active forms only.

FUTURE PROGRESSIVE
Singular Plural
I shall be seeing. We shall be seeing.
You will be seeing. You will be seeing.
He will be seeing. They will be seeing.
PRESENT PERFECT PROGRESSIVE
Singular Plural
I have been seeing. We have been seeing.
You have been seeing. You have been seeing.
He has been seeing. They have been seeing.
PAST PERFECT PROGRESSIVE
Singular Plural
I had been seeing. We had been seeing.
You had been seeing. You had been seeing.
He had been seeing. They had been seeing.
FUTURE PERFECT PROGRESSIVE
Singular Plural
I shall have been seeing. We shall have been seeing.
You will have been seeing. You will have been seeing.
He will have been seeing. They will have been seeing.

Exercise 3

Write the four following sentences in their active and passive forms, as the sentence, War sweeps the earth, is written.

  1. Education gives power.
  2. Knowledge frees men.
  3. Labor unions help the workers.
  4. The people seek justice.
Present Actve War sweeps the earth.
Passive The earth is swept by war.
Past Active War swept the earth.
Passive The earth was swept by war.
Future Active War shall sweep the earth.
Passive The earth shall be swept by war.
Pres. Per. Active War has swept the earth.
Passive The earth has been swept by war.
Past Per. Active War had swept the earth.
Passive The earth had been swept by war.
Fut. Per. Active War shall have swept the earth.
Passive The earth shall have been swept by war.

Exercise 4

Underscore all the verbs and verb phrases in the following quotation. Write all the time forms of the transitive verb, lose, as the time forms of the verb see are written in the foregoing table.

When we study the animal world and try to explain to ourselves that struggle for existence which is maintained by each living being against adverse circumstances and against its enemies, we realize that the more the principles of solidarity and equality are developed in an animal society, and have become habitual to it, the more chance it has of surviving and coming triumphantly out of the struggle against hardships and foes. The more thoroughly each member of the society feels his solidarity with each other member of the society, the more completely are developed in all of them those two qualities which are the main factors of all progress; courage, on the one hand, and, on the other, free individual initiative. And, on the contrary, the more any animal society, or little group of animals, loses this feeling of solidarity—which may chance as the result of exceptional scarcity or else of exceptional plenty—the more the two other factors of progress, courage and individual initiative, diminish; in the end they disappear, and the society falls into decay and sinks before its foes. Without mutual confidence no struggle is possible; there is no courage, no initiative, no solidarity—and no victory!—Kropotkin.

SPELLING

LESSON 8

In pronouncing words of more than one syllable we always lay a little greater stress upon one syllable of the word; that is, that syllable receives the emphasis of the voice so as to make it more prominent than the other syllables. This is called accent, and the syllable which receives the special stress is called the accented syllable.

Accent is the stress of the voice upon one syllable of the word.

You will notice when you look up the pronunciation of words in your dictionary that a little mark called the accent mark is placed after the accented syllable, as for example: di-vide'.

Many words differ in meaning according to which syllable receives the accent. Our spelling lesson for this week contains a number of these words.

These words, when accented on the first syllable, are nouns; when accented on the second syllable, they are verbs.

Monday

Con' tractCon tract'
Pro' testPro test'
Rec' ordRe cord'
Im' portIm port'
De' tailDe tail'

Tuesday

Con' vertCon vert'
Con' flictCon flict'
Prog' ressPro gress'
Im' pressIm press'
Ref' useRe fuse'

Wednesday

Con' testCon test'
Con' ductCon duct'
Proj' ectPro ject'
Des' ertDe sert'
Ex' tract Ex tract'

Thursday

Con' trastCon trast'
Con' sortCon sort'
Reb' elRe bel'
Con' scriptCon script'
Pres' ent Pre sent'

Friday

Com' poundCom pound'
Re' tailRe tail'
Com' pressCom press'
Im' print Im print'
Com' bineCom bine'

Saturday

Con' fineCon fine'
Sus' pectSus pect'
Com' muneCom mune'
Ex' portEx port'
In' creaseIn crease'

PLAIN ENGLISH

LESSON 9

Dear Comrade:

You have been studying several weeks now in this Plain English Course and we trust you are enjoying the unfolding of the powers of expression. We have been necessarily studying rules to some extent but you have seen how these grew out of the need for expression. We have been breaking the sentence up into its different parts. First we had the names of things and now we are studying the words used to tell what these things do and are—namely verbs. And as our life has grown complex and our powers of thinking diversified covering the whole range of time, past, present and future, we have had to invent many forms of the verb to express it all.

Now do not try to commit these facts concerning the verb to memory. You are not studying English in order to know rules. You are studying English that you may be able to say and write the things you think. So first of all, think, think! That is your inalienable right! Do not accept anything just by blind belief. Think it out for yourself. Study until you see the 'why' of it all. "Independent thinking has given us the present, and we will forever continue to make tomorrow better than today. The right to think is inalienable, or a man is a machine. Thought is life or a human soul is a thing."

And do not lack the courage of your own thoughts. You do not need to cringe or apologize to any man. "Our life is not an apology but a life." Dare to think and dare to express and live your thought.

Did you ever read Emerson's definition of genius? "To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,—that is genius." Then he says, "We dismiss without notice our own thoughts, because they are ours. Tomorrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense, precisely what we have thought and felt all along and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another."

Have you not experienced this? How often we hear some one express a truth and we say to ourselves, "That is just what I have long believed but I have never dared say so." We have been so taught all our lives to depend on some outside power and discredit the power within ourselves, that we pay no attention to the thoughts that are ours for who are we that we should dare to think and perchance disagree with those who have assumed authority over us! But that is precisely what we should dare to do—to think and to do our own thinking always. Who dares place anything before a man!

So think as you study these lessons and use these rules and formulas simply as means to an end, as tools to aid you in expressing these thoughts.

Yours for Education,

THE PEOPLE'S COLLEGE.

PARTICIPLES

147. We have found that the verb has five forms, made by internal changes in the verb itself,—the present time form, the s-form, the past time form, the present participle and the past participle.

We have also found that we can express various time forms by verb phrases formed by using the helping verbs, shall, will, have and be with one of the verb forms. All of these forms are used as the asserting word in the sentence. So long as the verb or verb phrase forms the predicate—the word or words that assert something of the subject—it still remains a verb. But we have found that the participle forms of the verb may be used as other parts of speech while still retaining some of the qualities of the verb.

148. You remember a sentence which we used when we studied participles, Making shoes is his work. Here we have the present participle making, with its object shoes, used as the subject of the verb is. Now a noun never takes an object, so making in this sentence is partly a verb, partly a noun, and is called a participle, which means partaker.

We have studied and used two forms of participles, the present and the past participle. The present participle always ends in ing and expresses action or existence in the present, or at the time mentioned in the sentence. For example, being, bringing, working, seeing, loving, hating, etc.

The past participle we found to be one of the principal parts of the verb. It expresses action or existence which is past or completed, at the time mentioned in the sentence. It is formed by adding d or ed to the regular verbs and by a change in the form in irregular verbs. For example, regular verbs: learned from learn, defeated from defeat, watched from watch. Irregular verbs: taught from teach, seen from see, won from win.

We have found that these participles may be used either as nouns or as adjectives. As for example: