I would like you to help me to understand this grammar pattern （Nに）Vれる
presented in Nihongo Sou Matome JLPT N3 (Pg.14). I'm not able to understand
why the passive voice is used in the example sentences.

>   1. 友達の赤ちゃんを抱っこしたら、泣かれてしまった。
>

Why is 泣く in passive form? **If** 友達の赤ちゃん was the one who cried, **then
shouldn't it be** 泣いてしまった?

>   2. 雨に降られて、服が濡れてしまいました。
>

My literal translation of this would be: "Something was fallen by the rain and
the clothes got soaked." It doesn't make sense...

**Again, why is the passive form used?**

>   3. 父に死なれて、大学を続けられなくなりました。
>

My literal translation of this would be: "(I or somebody) was died/killed by
my father, and could not continue university."

If it's my father who died and it's me who could not continue university,
wouldn't it be better to say 父が死んだから、大学を続けられなくなりました。 or something like this.

I really don't understand the use of the passive form in these 3 cases.

**Could you please explain this to me and give some more examples to grasp the
use of this kind of strange passive?**

Thank you so much in advance for your help!
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-09-23T11:19:33.913
72023
2019-10-13T07:48:57.850
2019-09-23T15:55:50.893
5229
29677
question
passive-voice grammar
Could you please explain the use of passive voice in the following sentences?
This is going to be long, so bear with me.

One of the main reasons the passive voice is used in language is to be able to
control **1) the flow of information** and **2) what the subject/topic is at
any given moment**. Stephen Pinker gave a great explanation of this in English
in one of his lectures which you can find
[here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=24m16s&v=OV5J6BfToSw).

Basically, certain sentences or parts of those sentences just sound weird or
abrupt unless the subject is the person or thing being acted upon.

1) Control of information flow

Take the English sentence:

> I picked up the baby, who was then stung by a bee.

The first part of this sentence is in the active voice, I picked up the baby.  
The second part, however is in the passive voice, the baby was stung by a bee.

If we banned all use of the passive voice, this sentence would become
something like:

> I picked up the baby, and a bee stung him.  
>  or  
>  I picked up the baby, after which a bee stung him.

In the first example sentence, the flow of information goes  
"Me → Baby → Bee"

But in the second set of sentences, it goes  
"Me → Baby → Bee → Baby"

Not only does the focus of our attention change more frequently, two of those
changes are to the exact same piece of information; the baby!

This is why the passive voice sounds more literary to our ears; it provides us
with a smoother flow of information.

2) Active control of the topic

The passive voice also lets us control who or what the subject of a sentence
is:

Take the sentence:

> After the search party found and rescued my brother when he got lost on a
> hiking trip, he went on to found a charity that helps rescued climbers pay
> for their rescue services.

The subject of the sentence starts out being "search party" in the first half
and changes to "my brother" in the second half.

What if it's not necessarily important who found him? What if we want to focus
entirely on the brother?

In that case, we could say:

> After my brother was rescued when he got lost on a hiking trip, he went on
> to found a charity that helps rescued climbers pay for their rescue
> services.

The subject of the entire sentence is "my brother", which we accomplish by
putting the first half in the passive voice.

The example sentences you provide show use of both.

I'll go through them one at a time:

> 友達の赤ちゃんを抱っこしたら、泣かれてしまった

Instead of this, we could say:

> 友達の赤ちゃんを抱っこしたら、((その)赤ちゃんが)泣いてしまった

In the case of your example sentence, the flow of information is smooth:

(I’ve used an overscore to denote the speaker; an underscore the baby)

（[私が]{HH}）[友達の赤ちゃんを抱っこしたら]{LLLLLLLLHHHHHH}、（[その赤ちゃんに]{HHHHHHH}）[泣かれてしまった]{HHHHHHHH}。

In the case of the second sentence, the flow of information is less smooth:

（[私が]{HH}）[友達の赤ちゃんを抱っこしたら]{LLLLLLLLHHHHHH}、（[その赤ちゃんが]{LLLLLLL}）[泣いてしまった]{LLLLLLL}。

For your second example sentence, you have:

> 雨に降られて、服が濡れてしまいました。

If we were to write this without passive voice, we would say:

> 雨が降ったため/ので/降って、服が濡れてしまいました。

In this new sentence, we first hear that it's raining, and only then do we
obtain the information that the something (服) got wet as a result.

However, in your example sentence, we first get the information that something
is getting rained on. We don't know what that something is, but it is
nonetheless the subject of the sentence, which is then almost immediately
revealed to be 服. Not only does the subject stay the same throughout the
sentence (active control of the subject) and give it better flow, but in this
case, we engage our listener by making them wonder what the subject is before
we give it to them.

For your third example sentence, you have:

> 父に死なれて、大学を続けられなくなりました。

If we were to remove the passive voice from this we would get:

> 父が死んだら/死んだ後、大学を続けられなくなりました。

In the first sentence, the subject remains on the speaker for the entire
sentence. By doing this the speaker's father didn't just die, we as the
listener are forced to empathize that the father dying was something that
happened to the speaker, something that affected the speaker. This is why this
use of the passive is sometimes called the passive of suffering as @Aeon
Akechi mentioned, because it forces us to empathize with the suffering of the
speaker.
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-10-11T09:16:00.347
72416
2019-10-13T07:48:57.850
2019-10-13T07:48:57.850
35632
35632
72023
answer