subject - verb inversion

[Igor]

Hello everybody!

There is a sentence:

"The visitors were shown all the different ways of making brandy."

This sentence us confusing because passive verb " were shown" express action about noun " ways", but it stay before noun. Would it be better, if put verb in more usual position in the sentence?

All the different ways of making brandy were shown to the visitors.

Thanks.

[Yulia]

Maybe it would, but then you would change the stress of the sentence. It points that the VISITORS are the matter of discussion.
The difference is very vague and still both variants are correct in terms of grammar.
It's like:

I was given a book.
The book was given to me.

[Erin]

Hey, great question!

Yulia has given us a very nice answer to your question. Your question is interesting because you are asking about how to use passive voice with a verb that has two objects, i.e., a direct object and an indirect object. The interesting choice here is whether to put the indirect object or the direct object first in the sentence.

As Yulia said, our choice depends on which noun we want to emphasize; in this case, I would say that we clearly want to emphasize the visitors, not the ways.

Hope that helps!

Please post further questions here.

Erin

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[yevgeny]

It seems to me that you are missing something.

For example, let's say there is only one visitor. [|)]
"The visitor WAS shown all the different ways of making brandy."
but:
"All the different ways of making brandy WERE shown to the visitor."

In the first case, 'was shown' refers to the visitor (it is singular).
In the second case, 'were shown' refers to the ways (it is plural).