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everybody. Could you tell me , what form of 'elect' here? Of 19 British prime ministers (elected) or (were elected) in the 20th century.

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  • You've received three answers. Please have the courtesy to acknowledge them. Thank you.
    – BillJ
    Commented Mar 13, 2020 at 7:32

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Passive voice is applied to the subject of the sentence when the subject is not the doer of the action.

In this sentence fragment, the prepositional phrase as written negates the prescribed use of passive voice since the subject of the sentence is not identified. If the phrase included a subject, then passive voice would apply:

Of 19 British prime ministers who were elected in the 20th Century

If the meaning is a statement of 20th-century prime ministers as the subject, then rewrite to eliminate the preposition and use the passive voice:

Nineteen British prime ministers were elected in the 20th century.

If the construct is relevant to additional information in the complete sentence, then this prepositional phrase would be active voice either at the beginning or the end of the sentence:

Of 19 British prime ministers elected in the 20th century, [rest of sentence].

or

[rest of sentence] of 19 British prime ministers elected in the 20th Century.

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  • Thank you very much. )
    – Tymiya
    Commented Mar 15, 2020 at 2:36
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Elected is the past-participle form of elect being used as a post-positive adjective; qualifying the noun prime ministers.

The passive voice of this would be been elected but expressing passive voice like that in the same way doesn't work.

You need to use a relative pronoun like that or which and bring in a new clause.

Of 19 British prime ministers that were elected in the 20th century

Of 19 British prime ministers that have been elected in the 20th century.

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... of 19 British prime ministers (elected) or (were elected) in the 20th century.

"Elected" is a past-participial clause modifying "British prime ministers".

Past-participial modifiers are 'bare' passives, as evident from the admissibility of a by phrase,

They are called 'bare' passives because they lack the usual "be" or "get" markers.

Semantically, such clauses are similar to relative clauses: compare "... of 19 British prime ministers who were elected in the 20th century".

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