please help me identify two sentences

Question

Are the two foloing sentences passive voice? If so, why?I'm well prepared.I'm not finished with you.thanks!!

Cool Breeze · Accepted Answer

The answer to your question depends on how the answerer defines passive. As I is not the object of any action in the sentences, many think that the sentences are active and the verbs prepared and finished are adjectival. However, structurally the sentences are in the passive voice as both contain a form of the passive auxiliary (be) and a past participle (prepared, finished).

I don't think it matters a whole lot which view you take. Speakers of other languages often have difficulties with structures like yours when they are faced with the fact that one pair of words can have two totally different meanings:

The door is closed at 9 o'clock.
- refers to the act of closing, which takes place at 9

The door is closed all night.
- refers to the state the door is in, closed, not open, and the door is in this state all night

Should the closing of the door be so difficult that it takes all night, the same structure (= is closed) would have to be used. As there are no inflections for nouns in the accusative and there is only one passive structure in English, this theoretically represents a problem. In another Germanic language, Swedish, there are three totally different types of passive voice, which means that problems like this never arise.

CB

please help me identify two sentences

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