Newsgroup: it.cultura.linguistica.inglese
Titolo: Passive participle

Taking a grammar test, I'm asked to turn this sentence to the passive voice:
 
   "Having taken advice, the committee decided not to proceed"
 
The suggested correct answer is:
 
   "Advice having been taken, the committee decided not to proceed"
 
I would like to know if an alternative sentence using just "taken" 
instead of "having been taken" could also be considered correct:
 
   "Advice taken, the committee decided not to proceed"
 
Thanks,
 
-- bb

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Did you know that grammar tests are often written by contract writers 
who sometimes don't know grammar well or just make mistakes?
 
The main clause of the sentence is "the committee decided not to 
proceed" and the "having taken advice" is just a phrase that modifies 
the subject. If the instruction were simply to turn the sentence into a 
passive voice sentence, a correct answer would be the following.
 
Having taken advice, it was decided by the committee not to proceed.
 
The "suggested correct answer" is not an appropriate response given the 
instructions provided.
 
 

 Having taken advice, it was decided by the committee not to proceed.
 
I'd say: "to not proceed".
Is it wrong?
 

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Of course. But the test was phrased differently: I was asked to rephrase a given sentence according to a certain hint, using the passive voice. In this case, the hint was "Advice ......................"
 
Anyway my question hasn't been answered yet: is it possible to say "advice taken" rather than "advice having been taken"?
 
Thanks,
 
-- bb

 "advice taken" rather than "advice having been taken"?
 
All things (having been) said, you can always use a shortened version 
for a longer one, but wouldn't that be a tad informal?
 
Besides, "Advice taken" makes me think of a reply to some pieces of 
advice, as in the sentence "Advice (has been) taken, thank you!".

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No, it's not wrong.
For what it's worth, a Google search returns
"not to proceed" 14,500,000
"to not proceed" 6,090,000
 
 

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This question is different than that of the original post. Even given 
the additional information that a "hint" suggested starting the sentence 
with "Advice," your sentence should not be considered correct. And 
still, the suggested correct answer should not be considered correct. 
Neither are passive sentences which is a requirement of even your 
enhanced statement of the directions.
 
Putting the passive voice requirement aside, I would not use "advice 
taken" in place of "advice having been taken" because of the problem 
with temporal "concordanza." A well-written sentence would make clear 
that the taking of advice proceeded the decision.
 
But the fact remains that the person writing this question in the first 
place was confused. Starting the rewritten sentence with "Advice" is an 
arbitrary hint and has nothing to do with making the sentence passive. 
The poor hack probably just got fixated on the passive sounding phrase 
"having been taken" and lost track of what was the main clause.

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Barone Barolo did not provide a picture of the quiz as it shows on paper.
Maybe there are blank fields to be filled with the required answer,
something like
"Adice ___ ___ ___, the committee decidd not to proceed",
thus making clear that the active voice to be turned into a passive 
voice is "Having taken", not the verb in the main clause.
 

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You must have written that example rather quickly (or your "v" and "e" 
keys are sticking). From what I understand of the foreign beast called 
grammar, "advice having been taken" is not a dependent clause, but an 
adverbial phrase. It does not have a subject. Therefore it cannot be 
active or passive. And, the sentence you wrote cannot be considered to 
be in passive voice.
 
I am not an expert on the rules of English grammar. I know my grammar 
intuitively, but for the most part, reliably. So, I could be wrong about 
the naming, but I don't think I'm wrong and I would have to be pointed 
to a reliable source to believe it.
 
 

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I am on the same page as you about the main issue at hand: the proposed 
"correct answer" sounds awkward and convoluted at least, even to my 
foreign ear! Maybe that kind of sentences can be found in some legal 
mumble mumble, but I wouldn't annoy honest English learners with such 
verbal roller coaster!
 
Having said that, we could discuss the naming of things.
A source, for instance, seems to call an adverbial *clause* the first 
part of the following sentence:
"Having eaten dinner, we went out for a walk"
http://www.grammarbank.com/reducing-adverbial-clauses.html
 
 
Maybe they see an implied subject?

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When you tread on the issue of grammar, you're likely to be bitten by 
various serpents of different persuasions. This is from the Wikipedia 
entry for adverbial clause. (Not an authoritative source, but convenient.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverbial_clause
 
 
""According to Sidney Greenbaum and Randolph Quirk, adverbial clauses 
function mainly as adjuncts or disjuncts, which parts also perform in a 
sentence as adverbial phrases or as adverbial prepositional phrases 
(Greenbaum and Quirk,1990). Unlike clauses, phrases do not contain a 
subject and predicate; they are contrasted here:
     We left the convention the day before.
         (adverbial phrase; contains no subject or predicate)
     We left before the speeches.
         (adverbial prepositional phrase; contains no subject or 
predicate—and no verb (action) is implied)
     We left after the speeches ended.
         (adverbial clause; contains subject and predicate)
     We left after the speeches.
         or, (".. after the speeches [ended]")
         (adverbial clause; contains subject and predicate, but the verb 
'ended' is omitted and implied)"
 
Beyond this singular potshot aimed at the topic, if any grammar wonks 
want to argue about the particular classification schema they admire or 
consider sacrosanct, I'd be happy to occasionally glance at the thread 
from the sidelines.
 
 
 
 
 
 

 active or passive. 
 
Well, that's really a matter of taste. If I get what you mean, your point is not really about adverbial phrases, but about non-finite dependent clauses. Infinitives, gerunds and participles don't have a subject: that is one way of seeing the issue. Other people say that non-finite clauses do have a subject, but it is either implicit or expressed in a special way. Here the subject is introduced by "for":
 
  For the world to be a better place, everybody must do their part.
 
Anyway I don't know if it is common in English, but in Italian we do call forms like "having been taken" (or "essendo stato preso") a (past) passive gerund.
 
-- bb