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From: jerry.friedman99@gmail.com (jerryfriedman)
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Aidan Kehoe wrote:


>  Ar an ceathrú lá de mí Bealtaine, scríobh jerryfriedman: 

>  > Aidan Kehoe wrote:
>  > 
>  > 
>  > >  Ar an chéad lá de mí Bealtaine, scríobh Antonio Marques:
>  > 
>  > >  > >>>> Never mind that in the bit that Steve quoted to flippantly
> inquire
>  > >  > >>>> on what 'that' meant, it was quite explicitly said
> 'dither'.
>  > >  > >>>
>  > 
>  > >>> The "it" there isn't idiomatic
>  > 
>  > >  > >> The sentence sounded wrong to me, but even now I'm not sure
> why. As
>  > >  > >> to 'it', maybe it's not idiomatic, but is it ungrammatical?
> I
> don't
>  > >  > >> quite see it.
>  > >  > >  > > "It" refers to "dither",
>  > >  >  > No, it's an impersonal passive, and I've just found out that
> for the
>  > >  >  > last 30/40 years I may have been using a construct that
> english
>  > >  >  > doesn't have.
>  > 
>  > > English does have an impersonal passive, and and what you wrote is
>  > > grammatical, but again, not idiomatic. No one would have noticed
> or
>  > > commented except that the sentence was posted to
> alt.usage.english.
>  > 
>  > I disagree wth both sentences. What's an example of an impersonal
> passive in
>  > English that anyone would say? And if Antonio tries posting
> sentences
> like
>  > that on the Internet as, say, Anthony Marks, I'll bet it wouldn't be
> long
>  > till someone asked him what his native language is.

> https://books.google.com/books?q="it+was+said"

> Now, a lot of those results are from court reports and so don’t qualify
> as
> “anyone would say,” but that register of English is still English.

I think "It was said that" isn't what Antonio meant by "impersonal
passive".  In "It was said that", the "It" refers to the thing that was
said, but Antonio said his "It" did not refer to "dither".

I don't object to calling "It was said that..." an impersonal passive,
though, and I may have misunderstood Antonio.

> Is the British Council wrong?

> https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/grammar/c1-grammar/advanced-passives-review#:~:text=The%20impersonal%20passive%20has%20two,from%20the%20third%20century%20BCE.

They're right, because they rule out Antonio's sentence; they say
what follows the past participle must be either a "that" clause or
an infinitive (with "to").

-- 
Jerry Friedman