0

I am confused as to what the passive voice of the "No sooner.... than" construction would be. For example: No sooner did he reach the station than the train started

In my opinion, the answer might be " No sooner was the station reached by him, the train started"?

7
  • You forgot to include than in your examples! Your version is an example of the passive voice, but I don't know why anyone would ever want to say it that way. Jul 26, 2020 at 15:25
  • @Kate bunting, yep sorry I forgot to add "than". I was just curious regarding the usage of passive voice in general, not that I actually wanted to use it that way. This passive construction is what had me ponder over for quite some time. Jul 26, 2020 at 19:01
  • This is not passive. It is a stylistic inversion of reach: He no sooner reached the station than the train started. Same thing. When a sentence starts with certain adverbs, you can use a form like that. no sooner, no longer
    – Lambie
    Jul 26, 2020 at 19:43
  • Here is a list of adverbs often used in inversions: perfect-english-grammar.com/inversion.html
    – Lambie
    Jul 26, 2020 at 20:32
  • 1
    //No sooner did he reach the station than the train started.// Here, the verbs are 'reach' and 'start', and these are used here intransitively. We cannot make passives of intransitive verbs, but of only transitive verbs.
    – Ram Pillai
    Aug 19, 2020 at 3:50

0

You must log in to answer this question.

Browse other questions tagged .