Just as good spelling is essential to write correctly, grammar is essential to write correctly and that what you write as a whole is well understood and clear to anyone who wants to read it.
Not only professional writers must know how to convey what they are thinking clearly and precisely, all people communicate in writing and for this reason we must express ourselves in such a way that whoever reads understands. This is achieved with good grammar and, of course, good spelling.
Grammar is a part of Linguistics that studies the structure of words and also the way they are combined to form sentences. This includes morphology and syntax. This constitutes a set of rules to speak and write a certain language correctly.
Within all the grammar rules, of their great amplitude and complexity, we will analyze and learn how to recognize the agent complement in a sentence, we will see several examples to know how and when it is used.
To understand what the agent complement is within a sentence, we must first identify two types of sentences: in the active voice and in the passive voice, since only one of them uses what we call the agent complement.
What do you need to recognize the agent plugin?
- Paper, pencil
- Read books, newspapers and magazines
- Write, practice.
Instructions to recognize the agent plugin
- To start and be able to talk about the agent complement, it is necessary to do it first about the passive voice and compare it with the active voice. The passive voice is mainly used to emphasize an action or a certain state. The subject in the passive voice can be so well known that it is not necessary to name it, or directly be unknown, that is to say that in the passive voice the subject (who performs the action) does not have the importance that it has in the active voice. For example:
- In this sentence we see that whoever performs the action of running over is not named, it is not known who it was, if it was a car or a motorcycle.
- On the other hand, in the active voice, the person who performs the action is emphasized. For example: A drunken young man ran over the man who was crossing the avenue. In this case it is clearly seen that the “intoxicated youth” is the one who performs the action.
- It is very common to use the passive voice when referring to a piece of news, for example, however when we speak regularly we do not use it as much as we unconsciously apply the active voice. For example, we say: Yesterday I ate a slice of pizza. It would not occur to us to say: The slice of pizza was eaten by me. On the other hand, if it is news, it is common to read or hear: Weapons and drugs were seized during the raid. In this sentence it is presumed that the police was the one who carried out the action, if we said it in an active voice it would be: (The police) seized weapons and drugs in the raid. You will notice that the position of the verb, the subject and other parts of the sentence are different.
- The agent complement exists only in the passive voice and is the one that performs the action on the subject. For example in the sentence:
- Traffic fines were paid by the owner of the vehicle.
- “traffic fines”: is the subject of the sentence, “the owner of the vehicle” is the complement agent. The agent plugin answers the question: by whom the traffic fines were paid.
- If we wrote this sentence in active voice we would have: The owner of the vehicle paid the traffic fines. We see that “the owner of the vehicle” is the subject of the sentence in the active voice. Therefore, the subject of the active voice is the agent complement of the passive voice. The agent complement is always preceded by the preposition “by”, which is why it is said to be a prepositional phrase. The agent plugin may or may not be there. Let’s see some examples:
- The famous book was read by everyone who went on that trip. (Those who perform the action are “all men…”)
- The man was escorted to the door of his house (in this case there is no agent complement).
- To practice, see if the following sentences have an agent complement and if so, write what it is:
- The sun was covered by clouds throughout the afternoon.
- Luckily the fire was extinguished.
- The road was destroyed by the earthquake.
- Another exercise: transform the sentence given in the active voice into the passive voice and mark the agent object.
- The young man violently snatched the phone from his hands.
- The rain soaked his clothes and shoes.
- Every day the man buys flowers for his wife.
Tips for Recognizing the Agent Plugin
- To identify the agent complement of a sentence, remember that it must be in the passive voice and that not all sentences have an agent complement.
- Remember that the agent complement is always preceded by the preposition «by» and answers the question by whom the action is performed?