[Grammar] I'm enclosing my cheque for £50, as agreed/was agreed/it was agreed/being agreed

[kadioguy]

I'm enclosing my cheque for £50, as agreed.

(Quoted from Practical English Usage 3rd)
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a. I'm enclosing my cheque for £50, as agreed.
b. I'm enclosing my cheque for £50, as was agreed.
c. I'm enclosing my cheque for £50, as it was agreed.
d. I'm enclosing my cheque for £50, as being agreed.

Are all of them acceptable? If not, could you tell me your opinion?

 

[jutfrank]

The first is the best.
The second is okay.
The third and fourth are wrong.

 

[kadioguy]

Thank you both.

The third and fourth are wrong.

Could you tell me more about that? Do you mean the third and fourth are grammatically OK but unnatural, or just grammatically wrong?

c. I'm enclosing my cheque for £50, as it was agreed.

I would see "as" in (c) as a conjunction.

b. I'm enclosing my cheque for £50, as was agreed.
d. I'm enclosing my cheque for £50, as being agreed.

I would see (d) as a grammatical variation of (b).

What do you think?

 

[emsr2d2]

If we mean that something is unnatural, we say that. "Wrong" means exactly that - wrong/incorrect.

 

[teechar]

I would say that "c" and "d" are very unusual or unnatural. Note that "as being agreed" in "d" implies that the final agreement has not yet been reached.

 

[jutfrank]

Could you tell me more about that? Do you mean the third and fourth are grammatically OK but unnatural, or just grammatically wrong?

First of all, just forget about d. All of the others have the same meaning, which I think can be expanded to in the way that was agreed.

The problem with d, apart from being unnatural, is that it does not carry the meaning that the agreement has been made previously. You could try to interpret it to mean that the agreement is still in progress but that doesn't make sense in the context.

I don't know whether c is grammatical or not, but I know that even if it is, it's unnatural enough to sound wrong. I think that the it is not required because I read as to mean something like 'in the way that'.

Perhaps someone else can provide a grammatical explanation of what's going on grammatically here (Phaedrus?) but that's really not necessary for you to learn this particular pattern.

You could just accept that b is natural and correct and a is more natural still as an ellipted form of b.

You will notice this way of using as in other phrases, such as:

as written
as promised
as requested
as shown
as advertised

When you see patterns like this (as X), you should read the word X as a past participle, where the whole phrase is a reduction of a passive structure that could be expanded to 'in a/the way that was X' or 'in a/the way that has been X'.

To repeat: don't waste too much brainpower trying to analyse the deep grammatical structure. Get a sense of the entire utterance and notice how the speaker is using the phrase to communicate what he wants to say. That's how you're going to acquire the language.