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be parked

sevengem

Senior Member
Chinese
The 60-year-old driver of the truck did not know that he in the way of the trolleybus.

I am really confused about why passive voice of "park" is used here since the doer is a person...
You can use either passive or active voice when a person is involved. Do you think you can only use the active voice with a person?

Of course, the active or passive refers to the verb, not the person.
I don't consider this the passive voice; park is not transitive here. "Parked" is the past participle which forms the subject complement. It describes the subject (he) as being in a state following his own action (parking). "He was parked" could be replaced by "he had parked".
When the event happens:

The driver parked the truck.
The truck was parked by the driver.

After it's happened, now that the truck is sitting there:

The truck is parked in the way of the trolleybus.

This is an adjectival passive: the truck is now a parked truck. It is parked somewhere in the street (we couldn't use a 'by'-phrase now).

We can talk about someone's car using the driver's name (or description/profession). If you park somewhere near my house and come inside, you can say, 'I'm parked outside' or 'I'm parked in the next street'. If Copyright's car is behind yours, you can say, 'Copyright is parked behind me.' In the original example, if the driver is still in the cab of his truck, blocking the trolleybus, we can say he's parked there; but we would also say it if he had got out of his cab and gone away. His truck is still blocking the trolleybus so we say he is still parked there.
I agree with MM. The past participle "parked" is being used as an adjective here.

By the way, "he was parked" = "his truck was parked"!👁 Big Grin :D




EDIT. As etb has just said....
By reading the posts of native speakers I have learned something that can never be learned by reading grammar books. I had thought he was parked to be grammatically wrong before I read the posts in this thread. I wish to know more about adjectival passive. Shall I start a new thread?
Thanks to all.
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