Lavender Brown: werewolf?

[muscatel1988]

No: HPFGUIDX 174535

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, Meliss9900 at ... wrote:
>> "To sink its teeth" as written in JKR's original text is a 
> passive verb. The action has not yet taken place.  When you 
> paraphrased  the text you changed the passive verb "to sink" into 
> an active verb  "sinks"  and, in doing so, the meaning of the text 
> changes.

Mus responds: "To sink" is an infinitive form of an active verb.  
Infinitives lack tense, and tense is what allows us to make a 
statement whose truth can be assessed: "I went to the Forest to see 
a 
unicorn" makes no claim about the truth of whether a unicorn was 
actually seen.  The tensed (active) form "I saw a unicorn" makes a 
statement which can have a truth value.

"The unicorn was seen by Quirrell" is a passive.  Passive foreground 
the 'logical object' of the verb by putting it in subject 
position: "the unicorn" is the thing that gets seen.  Passives 
aren't 
the opposite of infinitives - they can have infinitive forms, such 
as "to be saved" in "I wanted to the unicorn to be saved".

JKR's infinitive here doesn't assert that Greyback bit Lavender - 
that's quite right.

Mus, who's a linguist. :-)