[Mohammed Abu Risha]

Wuisi

I also admit it is confusing.

We are having the house redecorated.

Does it really have a passive meaning, given that a group of professionals are doing the job for us?

Or, is it active in meaning because we are talking about the people (We) who are getting the service?

Semantically, in other words, it is something like: "We are receiving the service of redecoration of our house"

At any rate, the question is related to such a clear passive sentence like:

The computer has been purchased by us.


Quirk to the best of my knowledge recognises only four functions in a sentence:

Subject
Verb
Complement (Subject or Object)
Adverbial

If the above understanding of Quirk is right, how can we parse the above sentence?

I have tried to surf the book of Quirk cited earlier but unfortunately could not see how a passive sentence is syntactically analysed.

More surprisingly, a textbook which is based on Quirk and whose auther asserts that no part of a sentence (on the sentence level) may be parsed except in terms of the above four elements seems to have not parsed any passive sentence! In one instance, he referred to the "by+agent" phrase and to my surprise he said: "This is called an agentive phrase", an explanation that contradicts his assumption that only the above four functions exist on the sentence level.

You know something. For me it is much easier abd much more understandable to parse "by+phrase" as an agentive phrase. But the point is: how do other grammarians look at the matter?