II.5. Voice restrictions
There are some certain restrictions in their use conditioned by the grammatical organization of the sentence
1. The passive construction is impossible when the direct object is expressed a reflexive pronoun or a noun with a possessive pronoun referring to the same personas the subject of the sentence.
He hurt himself.
2. There is no passive form in such phrasal verbs
To take part, to take courage, to take flight, to lose heart, to take heart
For example
No responsibility is taken for the loss of personal properties.
3. There are some stative verbs which do not refer to action, often have no progressive form cannot be used in the passive voice. For example to fit, to have, to resemble, to hold, to last, to possess
He has a lot of money.
He resembles his father.
4. There is a problem with noun phrase indicating quantity that cannot occur as the subject of the passive as below
A box weighed two dollars.
Two dollars were weighed by the box
But
He weighed the box.
Can be put into the passive
The box was weighed by him.
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