Please clarify the concept

Question

"coffee was drunk by her in order to stay awake." is incorrect sentence.

I am little confused, because In my opinion action of drinking was performed on coffee and " in order to " is describing purpose of action

2-- similarly, the house was built in 8th century to accommodate animals" is also incorrect

generis

strepanier · Answer

Hi-

Drink is one of those tricky irregular verbs. The basic forms are as follow:
Base form= drink
simple past = drank
past participle drunk
3rd person singular=drinks
gerund=drinking

The sentence is not "technically" wrong, but is in the passive voice, therefore would be better stated that "She drank the coffee in order to stay awake." keeping the sentence active and in the simple past tense.

adding the "was" in front of "drunk" creates the passive voice.
ex: Past Simple Passive
A glass of apple juice was drunk by that customer.

So technically and grammatically speaking the sentences above are correct, but would be better written and more concise in the active voice.

Does that help clarify?

dharam44 · Answer

please help passive voice role here

strepanier · Answer

the active voice = stronger more direct, and, more active writing. The subject is something, or it does the action of the verb in the sentence.

With the passive voice, the subject is acted upon by some other performer of the verb.

GMAT favors the active voice, while sentences written in the passive voice can still be correct and should not be used to eliminate an answer in your first glance through the choices. But, if you’ve narrowed the answers down to two grammatically correct options, and the only difference is that one is active and the other is passive, then you should eliminate the passive choice.

Hope that makes sense.

MartyTargetTestPrep · Answer

When we have a modifier like "in order to stay awake," we have an adverbial modifier that modifies the action described.

So what is the action? Was drunk.

OK, who or what engaged in that action?

The coffee.

So, your example sentence conveys the following illogical meaning.

Coffee was drunk in order to stay awake.

Did the coffee want to stay awake? No.

Adding "by her" doesn't solve the problem. Adding "by her" just gives you a reason to make the mistake of thinking that the sentence makes sense.

dharam44 · Answer

thanks a lot for your response

But 2nd sentence makes sense 
 2-- similarly, the house was built in 8th century to accommodate animals" is also incorrect

am I correct ?
 MartyTargetTestPrep

Please clarify the concept

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