---
title: The passive can also hide who is responsible, as in "Mistakes were m… — Active and passive voice, modal verbs · tree and pragmatics
description: The passive can also hide who is responsible, as in "Mistakes were made." Who acts: passive. A sentence of the lesson «Active and passive voice, modal verbs» of the english course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Active and passive voice, modal verbs, sentence 11

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The passive can also hide who is responsible, as in "Mistakes were made."

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**Who acts:** passive · **What happens:** hide, be, make · **To what, where:** Mistakes

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Active and passive voice, modal verbs» of the english course of Mova's primary school. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (passive), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:english:032-active-and-passive-voice-modal-verbs.lesson:11
# text = The passive can also hide who is responsible, as in "Mistakes were made."
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = english
# lesson = 032-active-and-passive-voice-modal-verbs.lesson
# annotation = Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): R5-strong ×1
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	passive	passive	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
3	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	also	also	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
5	hide	hide	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
6	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	8	nsubj	_	_
7	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	cop	_	_
8	responsible	responsible	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	ccomp	_	_
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
10	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	15	mark	_	_
11	in	in	ADP	IN	_	10	fixed	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=15:mark|HaikuPos=SCONJ:IN:_
12	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	15	punct	_	_
13	Mistakes	mistake	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	15	nsubj:pass	_	_
14	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	15	aux:pass	_	_
15	made	make	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	5	advcl	_	_
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
17	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: changed act=assert

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **hide** | can | the passive |  |  |  |  |  | vn concealment-16-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **is** | present |  |  |  |  |  | responsible *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **make** *in a quote* | past · passive |  | Mistakes |  |  |  |  | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: subject=Product |

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One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

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**Licence: [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)**, as the whole of Mova corpus 0.4, of which this treebank (the agreed school, `mova-school-agreed-en.conllu`) is part. The lessons were written for Mova's primary school. Sentence `school:english:032-active-and-passive-voice-modal-verbs.lesson:11`.

**The tree:** Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): R5-strong ×1. **The frames** are read from the tree by Mova's frames reader (`prag`) when this page is built, the lesson read in order, so a pronoun may be resolved from an earlier sentence.

See the [release 0.4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/releases/0.4/).

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