Newsgroup: it.cultura.linguistica.inglese
Titolo: be sailed

Can I say
   "I watched the boat be sailed into the harbour"?
 
Kiuhnm

    "I watched the boat be sailed into the harbour"?
 
It is probably grammatically correct, I am not sure, but it sounds 
awkward to my ears. I would say "I watched the boat sail..."  and of 
course I'd use the American spelling of harbor. Or, if passivity were 
important, I say 'being sailed.'
 


That's odd. I know that "I saw him fall" means I witnessed the whole 
action of falling while "I saw him falling" means I saw only part of the 
action.
The original sentence was "We watched the men sail the boat into the 
harbor" and I was asked to rewrite it in the passive.
 
Kiuhnm

 harbor" and I was asked to rewrite it in the passive.
 
 
The men were seen sailing the boat into the harbor
 
 
 


The exercise also tells you how to begin the sentence.
 
Kiuhnm


What's odd, that I found "be sailed" awkward?
 
If the exercise required that you rewrite it as a passive sentence, then 
I would write, "The sailing of the boat into the harbor by men was 
watched by us. But I promise you, I would regret the act of writing, 
afterwards. With a different sentence, I might have chosen the 
equivalent of "The sail of the boat" but in this case I would avoid it 
because of possible confusion with the noun "sail."
 
Given the next example, I would write the sentence that follows it.
"We watched the men sell the boat in the harbor."
"The sale of the boat in the harbor by men was watched by us."
But, I would say the following sentence.
"The selling of the boat in the harbor by men was watched by us."
This also avoids a possible auditory confusion.
 
Regarding your thoughts on difference in meaning, I would say that there 
is a difference in emphasis rather than on understanding. If you saw him 
falling, you are emphasizing that you saw the crucial action of losing 
balance and descent. That phrasing doesn't say that you also saw the 
impact as the ground stopped his descent. Of course, you'd have to look 
away at the last fraction of a second to miss the impact, so one assumes 
that if you saw him falling you also saw the result of that fall, or the 
whole event. But you are right that it isn't explicit.
 
Let's imagine that you were looking out of a second story window in a 
three story house. While gazing at the view, the flailing body of a man 
passes down the frame from top to bottom, accompanied by a scream and 
concomitant Doppler effect. You did not see the start of the fall, 
apparently from the third story, or the end of the fall, most likely the 
roof of an SUV. However, you can say either sentence, "I saw him fall," 
or "I saw him falling." Language just isn't that exact. The insurance 
company would have to cross-examine you on the witness stand to 
determine just what you saw and what you didn't see.
 
As I said, I am not proposing that "be sailed" is grammatically 
incorrect. The awkward sound of it just makes me wonder if it is 
correct. I would not choose to say it. Remember, I'm a native speaker, 
so I make my choices by ear, not by prescriptive rules of grammar. 
Instead, the effect of those rules have been branded onto the pathways 
of my neurons after many years of relative wakefulness in American 
culture. Perhaps someone else can stumble over a rule, or I'll ask a 
professional editor and grammar wonk when I run into one. That actually 
happens on a regular basis.
 
I'd be curious what the writer of the exercise decided was the 
appropriate answer.
 

 What's odd, that I found "be sailed" awkward?
 
Yes.

Here's the exercise.
 
---->
Finish each of the following sentences in such a way that it is as 
similar as possible to the sentence before it.
.
.
.
b) We watched the men sail the boat into the harbour.
We watched the boat .................
<----
 
The answer is "sailing (being sailed) into the harbour".
 
I find it odd that transforming the sentence from active to passive asks 
for substituting the -ing form for the "base form".
 
Kiuhnm

 for substituting the -ing form for the "base form".
 
Was making the sentence passive the point or the result? If it was the 
point then it's more like a puzzle than an exercise. And it's a rather 
inconsistent one if the instruction says to make the sentence as similar 
as possible, and then the answer just indicates the gerund form of the 
verb. They changed the object being watched from the men to the boat, 
and then eliminated the men altogether! Writing exercises and 
instructions for exercises are specialized skills that not all writers 
possess. What can you expect? They spelled harbor incorrectly, too. (I 
know, I know.)
 
 

 only part of the action.
 
 
Come si dice "lo vidi cadendo" (diverso da "lo vidi cadente")?
Cio�:
- lo vidi che stava cadendo
- lo vidi che stavo cadendo
 
 
-- 
"I like the Old Masters, by which I mean John Ford, John Ford,
and John Ford."
                -- Orson Welles
 

 know, I know.)
 
I think that those exercises, although not perfect, are still worth 
doing. They complement the explanations well enough.
 
Kiuhnm