Complex sentences

It's a simple sentence, with one verb group: "lay".

("Shaped" can be a verb, but here it's serving as an adjective.)

The descriptive detail is packaged into an adjectival group and two prepositional phrases:

• roughly arrow-shaped
• of wood
• by the track

So this version has no extra actions—the plank is just lying by the track.

Compare with this version:

• The second version contains an extra clause, with the verb group "roughly fashioned" at its heart.
• There's no connector, so it's not a compound sentence—the extra clause is playing a modifier role, giving more information about the main clause.
• This extra clause also has an implied subject—the plank of wood—carried through from the main clause.

So what? Why does this matter?

This version describes the plank of wood in terms of an action: it was fashioned into the shape of an arrow.

That means somebody fashioned it—and that's different to the first version.

But notice that we don't know who fashioned the arrow.

If you've done the Verb Groups lesson, you might recognise this as an example of passive voice.

• In active voice (which is what we write most of the time), the actor of an event (the person who did the fashioning) takes the grammatical subject position in a clause.
• But in passive voice, the actor is hidden from view and the object (the thing being fashioned) becomes the subject.

For example:

• A hermit fashioned the plank into an arrow. 🧙 (active voice)
• The plank was fashioned into an arrow. 🤷‍♀️  (passive voice)

In passive voice, the 'actor' is usually obscured entirely from an event, but it doesn't have to be. In this snippet, the actor ("the odd tone of his voice") is added using a prepositional phrase starting with 'by'.

Compare the original passive voice snippet to an active voice version of it:

• Passive voice: She sat beside him, puzzled by the odd tone of his voice.
• Active voice: She sat beside him, the odd tone of his voice having puzzled her.

There are 2 main differences:

1. The active voice version brings the "odd tone of his voice" into focus
   Even though the 'actor' is still given in the passive voice version, putting it in a prepositional phrase modifier makes it feel more like just a bit of extra detail. In contrast, in the active voice version, it's an important part of the clause and so draws focus.
2. The passive voice version is more efficient
   The passive voice version uses fewer words than the active voice version. It has an implied subject, carrying the subject of the main clause ('she') into the supporting clause. The active voice version also uses an extra tense helper to keep the clause in completed tense.

Both of these snippets are showing completed action.

• The plank of wood has been fashioned—there's nobody sitting by the side of the road working on it!
• Alanna is puzzled—she's not gradually becoming puzzled.

On the last page, we saw that we create continuous action by using the -ing form of a verb. What happens if we try that here?

A plank of wood lay by the side of the track, roughly fashioning in the shape of an arrow.

Uh-oh! We lose the passive voice, and now it sounds like the plank of wood is fashioning something (and the whole sentence sounds weird because there's nothing filling that object role).

We need to use a tense helper, so that we can keep the passive -ed verb form:

• A plank of wood lay by the side of the track, being roughly fashioned in the shape of an arrow.

This interaction between timing and voice in clauses like these is pretty obscure and uncommon. For the most part, you just need to remember:

• -ing verbs for active voice/ongoing action.
• -ed verbs for passive voice/completed action.