Voice, transformation of sentences, and simple, compound and complex sentences
LUG-105 English and Legal Language, Unit II: Voice: active and passive. · LLB · 60 min
Three syllabus topics that the examiner tests together under "change as directed": the active and passive voice (how to convert in every tense, and when the passive is right or wrong in legal writing); the transformation of sentences without change of meaning (affirmative and negative, assertive and interrogative, exclamatory, degrees); and the classification of sentences by structure into simple, compound and complex, with clause analysis and the conversion of one into another. Every voice and structure item of the papers (2017-18 A Q14, 2019-20 A Q8, 2025-26 Q2(b) and Q2(c)) is worked, and the 2019-20 ten-mark "kinds of sentences" and 2023-24 "compound and complex" questions are answered. The lecture covers syllabus topics 8, 9 and 10.
Objectives
- Change a sentence from the active to the passive voice and back in any tense, with or without an agent
- Decide when the passive voice is appropriate in a statute, a pleading or a judgment and when it hides the actor
- Transform sentences between affirmative and negative, assertive and interrogative, and exclamatory forms without changing the meaning
- Classify a sentence as simple, compound or complex by counting its finite verbs and ranking its clauses
- Convert simple, compound and complex sentences into one another as directed, and analyse a statutory sentence into its clauses
Slides
- Active and passive voice: what changes
- Special cases of the passive
- When the passive is right, and when it hides the actor
- Transformation: affirmative and negative; assertive and interrogative
- Transformation: exclamatory, imperative and degrees
- Simple, compound and complex sentences
- Simple, compound, complex: converting one into another
- Clause analysis of a statutory sentence
- Kinds of sentences: the complete answer
- Exercise with answers
- How the examiner asks it
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