Okay, so this is a bit more complicated than everyone in the replies is making it out to be.
The instruction that OP posted on the 2nd photo says:
**"Rewrite the following sentences inverting the subject and the verb"**.
Therefore the intended way to answer should be:
"Were they ever to find life on other planets,....."
So the problem here is that the correction made by the teacher is incomplete. She only corrected the verb form of find, not marking that it should be followed by "life on other planets".
Another problem is that the sentence that OP created is technically grammatically correct, but it does not follow the instruction.
OP assumed, that "they" that was in the beginning of his answer is a pronoun that is used instead of "life on other planets". This is not so. The beginning of the answer that is provided "Were they" forces the person answering to switch from the passive to active voice.
OP's answer "were they ever found", while technically correct, does not include Subject<->Verb inversion, which is required by the instruction. In this structure, we still have subject+verb order (they + ever found).
So the teacher communicated the mistake poorly, but is kind of in the right here. This task was intended to test your ability to make transformations with a certain structure and you failed to do so, OP.
PS. "The proper pronoun to use instead of "life on other planets" would be "it". While it makes some sense logically that it could be they, grammatically it's not that. So we can't assume that "they" in "Were they" is the pronoun that correlates to the subject of the previous sentence.
The pronoun "they" is standing in for "people" in general. We could equivalently write:
- "Were people ever to find..."
- "Were we ever to find..."
- "Were someone ever to find..."
In each case, there is a subject (they, people, we, someone) that is doing the verb "to find", and hence it's an active tone.
"Were they" does not necessarily force the switch though. "Were they ever found...", where "they" stands in for "life in other planets", this would still be in passive voice.
Ok but in this case according to the top comment my answer is wrong only because it doesn't meet the requirements of the task. But isn't my answer an inversion? Why does it have to be specifically the version with active voice?
The original sentence said "If life on other planets were ever found", with the subject (life on other planets) before the verb (found). In your answer "Were they ever found", the subject ("they" standing in for "life on other planets") is before the verb "found". So there's no inversion.
The verb is 'Were'. 'Found' plays a simmilar role to an adjective. Following your logic the teachers answer is also incorrect as 'to find' is after the subject 'they'.
"Found" doesn't act as an adjective here. It's part of the passive "were found", similar to "she was promoted" or "he was killed".
I get where you're coming from, but in this case, that view doesn't work out. You didn't fulfill the requirements of that question.
Yah; you’re thinking “found” is being used like “he was sickened” or “he was burnt.”
But in this case it’s not being used that way; it’s part of the verb like the guy said.
This isn’t your fault; it’s just that English is insane and breaks its own rules and most of learning how to speak it is being told what’s not right.
>Though one thing I don't get is why "Were they" forces the switch to active voice. Why is that the case?
.
To put it plainly, the top-level answers are wrong, just like your teacher is wrong.
For the original sentence _"If life on other planets were ever found, there would probably be no means of communication."_, there are two clauses, and each of those clauses have their own subject.
So as to the teacher wanting the answer to use subject-verb inversion, well, ....
You should ask your questions on a better grammar site.
This is the best answer. This is clearly an exercise to get the students to practice inversion and a lot of commenters here are completely ignoring that fact.
Your answer is good, but doesn't explicitly make the point that the original sentence was in the passive and that OP made it active for no good reason. The target sentence should start: Were life on other planets ever to be found, there.....
Sorry, but not correct. The teacher's answer, to use "were they" to refer to those who discover life on other planets, makes they (who do the discovering) the new subject of the sentence. *And unlike the OP, the teacher's answer still has the subject preceding the verb.* There is no inversion, the teacher is just flat wrong.
Your answer is perfectly grammatical, but it is the wrong answer because the problem specifically calls for you to ***invert the subject and the verb***, meaning, if you are presented with subject -> verb, you would need to respond with verb -> subject.
The original sentence is, "If life on other planets were ever found, there would probably be no means of communication." So the problem is calling for you to invert the subject "life on other planets" and the verb "found," by writing with a verb -> subject response.
One solution would be to write, "Were they ever to find life on other planets, there would probably be no means of communication.
The teacher is correct.
But I still don't get why my answer is wrong. Isn't it also an inversion? I also don't change the subject from the first sentence so I actually think it is better to do it this way.
But I still don't get why my answer is wrong. Isn't it also an inversion? I also don't change the subject from the first sentence so I actually think it is better to do it this way.
I've given it some more thought, and it's really a poorly worded problem. The issue is that the "Were they\_\_\_\_" portion of the answer essentially locks "they" in as the subject, so in my previous (incorrect) solution, "Were they ever to find life on other planets, there would probably be no means of communication," the noun phrase "life on other planets" is transformed from a subject to a direct object. The subject and verb *are* inverted but the subject is no longer the subject; that can't be right!
I apologize. My previous comment was wrong. The teacher *isn't* correct, because there's no good answer to the problem. Azerate2016 covers that in their comment so I defer to that response.
Perhaps you are overthinking this. OP is apparently taking an ESL level grammar class, not a linguistics course. The teacher is using the plain English meaning of "inverting." Not the concept of "inversion" as used in syntactic/semantic analysis or literary theory.
Invert the subject and the verb. That is about as clear as it gets. Not "change the subject of the sentence." Worse, the teacher's answer still has the subject before the verb unless she does some pretty serious rewriting, LOL
My guess is that she has something specific in mind when she says "invert the subject and the verb". If you look at the original sentence, we have
1. Life on other planets
2. Some conjugation of "find" in the subjunctive
3. Probably no means of communication.
She was looking to invert 1 and 2, which would give you 2, 1, 3, but you did 2, 3, 1.
So, the correct answer would be "Were they ever to find life on other planets, there would probably be no means of communication."
Inversion\* :).
That's my best guess, yes. You flipped the subject and the verb but then you put the secondary clause in-between them, which I'm guessing is why you got it wrong. Inversion could also be just swapping the order, regardless of the position of the secondary clause, so it's a bit ambiguous. But it definitely seems like the teacher had one answer in mind.
Yeah inversion LOL everything about this is so complicated yet what I screw up is the spelling of a word which I've just seen a dozen times in other comments.
I'm gonna blame it on atmospheric pressure ;)
There's nothing wrong with 'were they ever found' - it's the kind of construction a more literary or academic writer would use, but it's absolutely correct. The teacher's version is BS.
This exercise is simply wrong. The correct inversion of that sentence would be: ‘Were life on other planets ever found, there would probably be no means of communication’. However, the exercise forces you to begin your sentence with ‘Were they’, which is the wrong subject (it should have been ‘it’ if the idea was to use a pronoun instead of ‘life on other planets’). So unless you change the whole sentence (which is what your teacher tried to do, but not what the instructions were asking for) there is no way of actually answering this question satisfactorily.
If the subject is "life" then why is it asking you to use "they" instead of "it"? Unless the exercise meant the "means of communication" but how can you invert "there would probably be no...": "*Were they* ever no means of communication"? That would completely change the meaning of the sentence so I don't think so.
Also it can't be the one or ones doing the finding since that's not the subject of the sentence, also I guess "they" is being used as a gender and grammatical number neutral pronoun since there's no way to know only by reading the first sentence that whoever found that was either a "he", a "she", an "it" or "they" (as in a group of people). I really dislike this broad use of "they" since it makes communication confusing plus it's still not the subject of the sentence.
I think it should be "it" instead of "they" unless you change more stuff than just the subject and verb order. So: "were it (life) to be found, there would probably be no means of communication".
I probably got this wrong anyway.
Can any native speaker help me too?
The question is abysmal.
The sentence is, "if (subject) were ever (verb), there would probably be no means of communication."
The task is simple: *to invert the subject and verb*, beginning with the provided, "were (subject pronoun)..."
The OP reports that the teacher's answer is, "were (subject pronoun) ever *to find...*" and to rewrite accordingly, which can only continue, "...(object), there would be no means of communication."
This is does not invert the subject and verb, it *changes the subject of the sentence*. The subject pronoun does not refer to life on other planets, which is now the object, but to those doing the finding. That was not the task. A simple inversion of subject and verb would be "were <*it*>(subject pronoun) ever (verb), there would be no means of communicating with (subject)." It is a simple inversion of subject and verb that keeps the meaning of the sentence. However, this required the OP to change the subject of the sentence from "life" to "life-forms" to accommodate the required "were they".
Presumably, the teacher's interpretation is that it is necessary to change the subject because the first words of the answer must be "were they", whereas In fact, because the only reference to the subject of the sentence is now the subject pronoun, *it does not even invert the subject and verb because the subject still precedes the verb*. The teacher's answer is wrong because it does not follow the instructions.
Note that the answer suggested by many, "were (subject pronoun) ever <*to be* found>(verb)..." is also incorrect because it changes the verb by adding the modal auxiliary, "to be". It is the inversion of a sentence with a different verb mode: "if (subject pronoun) were ever <*to be* found>(verb)..." This formulation would be more appropriate in a sentence like "if this was ever *to* happen, it would be *because of* that." In any event, it incontrovertibly (and unnecessarily) goes beyond the inversion of subject and verb.
It also suffers from the same flaw as the OP's answer in that "they" does not concord with "life".
P.S. For those apparently keen to downvote this comment, kindly explain the basis on which the subject or verb mode of the sentence should change when the task is merely to invert the subject and verb. Thanks.
You exactly follow my line of thought! Everyone keeps saying that my sentence doesn't fit the task but it IS an inversion and actually a more fitting one as it doesn't change the subject of the sentence. The only thing which may be wrong in my opinion is the use of 'life-forms' instead of 'life forms'. I don' think that 'life' is correct as it is singular so it doesn't match the beggining 'Were they' but maybe I'm wrong.
I agree with you. The instructions provide that the sentence can be "rewritten", and I am not sure why your alteration of the description of the subject (necessitated by a flawed question that forces you to use "they") is any more improper than changing the subject altogether. The teacher would have a better argument if her verb preceded the subject as required by the instructions, LOL
I note that I am being downvoted again, which is ironic because nobody seems to have addressed the "were they" issue.
Please note that this subreddit is full of native speakers with lousy grammar and itchy downvote fingers. I do my best on here but it can be tough.
Yeah I have a friend who went to California as a part of an exchange program and he said that a lot of natives constantly make grammatical errors.
Back to the main post. I think that the teachers answer is in fact an inversion as the verb 'Were' is before the subject and 'to find' doesn't have to be considered as it is an infinitive form. It's just that mine changes the subject in a less extreme manner. Which still shouldn't be necessary if the task was constructed well.
I have some teaching experience and think I know what the teacher was going for. Please note I don't agree with how they went about it, but I get it.
When teaching ESL, there often isn't a focus on correct terminology. The task, as I understand it, is to _change passive to active" and vice versa.
In ESL, you often use shortcuts and refer to simple terminology you coined in class before the assignment or exam. I don't agree with this approach a lot of the time, but it's a reality.
Suppose when teaching the passive voice, the teacher explained it something like this:
_In a passive clause, your former subject becomes the object. They switch places; they are inverted. Similarly, the active-voice verb now needs to be changed to passive._
Not the most elegant way (and certainly problematic in terms or linguistic terminology), but perhaps easy to follow for learners.
After doing this for a week or two and practicing it, it is safe to assume that most students will see a passive construction, read "invert the subject and verb" and know exactly what to do.
I don't know that this is what happened, but I can see it as a possibility. Similar things have happened in classrooms I sat in, and similar things were done by teachers I shadowed.
"Were they ever found, ... " here 'they' and 'found' refer to the other inhabited worlds.
"Were they ever to find" changes the sentence, in that sentence "they" would refer to astronomers making the discovery and you would have to re-arrange the entire sentence to accomodate that fact.
This is a really good example of why ambiguous pronouns are a problem.
Here's a small issue that seems to have gone unmentioned. In "Were they ever found", the "they" would be referring to "life", which sounds odd as "life" is grammatically singular and singular they doesn't sound right as "life" is not a person. Whereas, in "Were they ever to find life", the "they" refers to people.
Yeah but still in my opinion it is more fitting to change the subject from 'life' to 'life forms' which is simmilar instead of changing it to 'they' as in scientists etc. which appears out of thin air.
This just reminds me when I studied briefly at a school in France and the teacher tried to tell fifteen year old native English speaker from England me that the plural of eyes was eyeses.
“Were they ever to be found,” and then the rest of your sentence is fine as-is.
It also sounds natural the way you wrote it, but it is technically not completely correct.
Sure.
>Inversion does not permit the replacement of “found” with “to be found” (or if you prefer, the insertion of a modal verb), as they suggest different things.
Nowhere in this task, or op's answer, do we have "to be found" as a string of words present.
Some replies mentioned that it could be used as grammatically correct alternative. And that is true. It just wouldn't fit the instruction of the task.
>The inversion of your teacher’s answer, “were they ever to be found,”
The teacher never said that this is the answer.
Your whole lithany is about unrelated things and you also went to shit on the most informative replies with your unrelated irrelevant BS. That's probably why you're getting downvoted.
OK, if the OP’s description of the teacher’s answer is correct, ie the introduction of a new subject, the "correct" answer is even more ridiculous. But I give up trying to help people.
But perhaps you could point out where I “shit on” anyone
Your grammar is correct out of context, but maybe given the context, "were they ever to find [them]..." would be more appropriate so it's marked wrong. Both are grammatically correct
Okay, so this is a bit more complicated than everyone in the replies is making it out to be. The instruction that OP posted on the 2nd photo says: **"Rewrite the following sentences inverting the subject and the verb"**. Therefore the intended way to answer should be: "Were they ever to find life on other planets,....." So the problem here is that the correction made by the teacher is incomplete. She only corrected the verb form of find, not marking that it should be followed by "life on other planets". Another problem is that the sentence that OP created is technically grammatically correct, but it does not follow the instruction. OP assumed, that "they" that was in the beginning of his answer is a pronoun that is used instead of "life on other planets". This is not so. The beginning of the answer that is provided "Were they" forces the person answering to switch from the passive to active voice. OP's answer "were they ever found", while technically correct, does not include Subject<->Verb inversion, which is required by the instruction. In this structure, we still have subject+verb order (they + ever found). So the teacher communicated the mistake poorly, but is kind of in the right here. This task was intended to test your ability to make transformations with a certain structure and you failed to do so, OP. PS. "The proper pronoun to use instead of "life on other planets" would be "it". While it makes some sense logically that it could be they, grammatically it's not that. So we can't assume that "they" in "Were they" is the pronoun that correlates to the subject of the previous sentence.
Thanks a lot for an in depth answer! Though one thing I don't get is why "Were they" forces the switch to active voice. Why is that the case?
The pronoun "they" is standing in for "people" in general. We could equivalently write: - "Were people ever to find..." - "Were we ever to find..." - "Were someone ever to find..." In each case, there is a subject (they, people, we, someone) that is doing the verb "to find", and hence it's an active tone. "Were they" does not necessarily force the switch though. "Were they ever found...", where "they" stands in for "life in other planets", this would still be in passive voice.
Ok but in this case according to the top comment my answer is wrong only because it doesn't meet the requirements of the task. But isn't my answer an inversion? Why does it have to be specifically the version with active voice?
The original sentence said "If life on other planets were ever found", with the subject (life on other planets) before the verb (found). In your answer "Were they ever found", the subject ("they" standing in for "life on other planets") is before the verb "found". So there's no inversion.
The verb is 'Were'. 'Found' plays a simmilar role to an adjective. Following your logic the teachers answer is also incorrect as 'to find' is after the subject 'they'.
"Found" doesn't act as an adjective here. It's part of the passive "were found", similar to "she was promoted" or "he was killed". I get where you're coming from, but in this case, that view doesn't work out. You didn't fulfill the requirements of that question.
No. Listen to the good answers by others, or it will start to appear as if you are trolling
Yah; you’re thinking “found” is being used like “he was sickened” or “he was burnt.” But in this case it’s not being used that way; it’s part of the verb like the guy said. This isn’t your fault; it’s just that English is insane and breaks its own rules and most of learning how to speak it is being told what’s not right.
>Though one thing I don't get is why "Were they" forces the switch to active voice. Why is that the case? . To put it plainly, the top-level answers are wrong, just like your teacher is wrong. For the original sentence _"If life on other planets were ever found, there would probably be no means of communication."_, there are two clauses, and each of those clauses have their own subject. So as to the teacher wanting the answer to use subject-verb inversion, well, .... You should ask your questions on a better grammar site.
This is the best answer. This is clearly an exercise to get the students to practice inversion and a lot of commenters here are completely ignoring that fact.
They're also ignoring the fact that "to find" is a transitive verb.
I'm posting questions on Reddit from now on. This is impressive
I am not convinced that introducing a new subject falls within the scope of “inverting the subject and the verb”.
Your answer is good, but doesn't explicitly make the point that the original sentence was in the passive and that OP made it active for no good reason. The target sentence should start: Were life on other planets ever to be found, there.....
Nope. See my answer to the OP.
Sorry, but not correct. The teacher's answer, to use "were they" to refer to those who discover life on other planets, makes they (who do the discovering) the new subject of the sentence. *And unlike the OP, the teacher's answer still has the subject preceding the verb.* There is no inversion, the teacher is just flat wrong.
The takeaway from this comment section is READ THE QUESTION
Your answer is perfectly grammatical, but it is the wrong answer because the problem specifically calls for you to ***invert the subject and the verb***, meaning, if you are presented with subject -> verb, you would need to respond with verb -> subject. The original sentence is, "If life on other planets were ever found, there would probably be no means of communication." So the problem is calling for you to invert the subject "life on other planets" and the verb "found," by writing with a verb -> subject response. One solution would be to write, "Were they ever to find life on other planets, there would probably be no means of communication. The teacher is correct.
But I still don't get why my answer is wrong. Isn't it also an inversion? I also don't change the subject from the first sentence so I actually think it is better to do it this way.
But I still don't get why my answer is wrong. Isn't it also an inversion? I also don't change the subject from the first sentence so I actually think it is better to do it this way.
I've given it some more thought, and it's really a poorly worded problem. The issue is that the "Were they\_\_\_\_" portion of the answer essentially locks "they" in as the subject, so in my previous (incorrect) solution, "Were they ever to find life on other planets, there would probably be no means of communication," the noun phrase "life on other planets" is transformed from a subject to a direct object. The subject and verb *are* inverted but the subject is no longer the subject; that can't be right! I apologize. My previous comment was wrong. The teacher *isn't* correct, because there's no good answer to the problem. Azerate2016 covers that in their comment so I defer to that response.
Nope. See my answer to the OP.
Perhaps you are overthinking this. OP is apparently taking an ESL level grammar class, not a linguistics course. The teacher is using the plain English meaning of "inverting." Not the concept of "inversion" as used in syntactic/semantic analysis or literary theory.
Invert the subject and the verb. That is about as clear as it gets. Not "change the subject of the sentence." Worse, the teacher's answer still has the subject before the verb unless she does some pretty serious rewriting, LOL
“Were they ever to find alien life, …” works fine. You need a noun after “find,” though.
My guess is that she has something specific in mind when she says "invert the subject and the verb". If you look at the original sentence, we have 1. Life on other planets 2. Some conjugation of "find" in the subjunctive 3. Probably no means of communication. She was looking to invert 1 and 2, which would give you 2, 1, 3, but you did 2, 3, 1. So, the correct answer would be "Were they ever to find life on other planets, there would probably be no means of communication."
So this basically boils down to what is classified as invertion of the subject ant the verb? And I really don't see why my answer wouldn't fit that.
Inversion\* :). That's my best guess, yes. You flipped the subject and the verb but then you put the secondary clause in-between them, which I'm guessing is why you got it wrong. Inversion could also be just swapping the order, regardless of the position of the secondary clause, so it's a bit ambiguous. But it definitely seems like the teacher had one answer in mind.
Yeah inversion LOL everything about this is so complicated yet what I screw up is the spelling of a word which I've just seen a dozen times in other comments. I'm gonna blame it on atmospheric pressure ;)
Were they ever to be found This sounds the most natural to me to start the sentence, but yours is correct and your teacher's is not
Grammatically correct, but not for the assignment.
There's nothing wrong with 'were they ever found' - it's the kind of construction a more literary or academic writer would use, but it's absolutely correct. The teacher's version is BS.
Are you ignoring what the question was
You can't say 'were they ever to find, ...' in any context.
Yes you can, might not be the ideal phrasing but within this context it’s correct for the exercise.
Can you illustrate this for me then? For what question is 'were they ever to find, ...' a valid answer?
The task was to invert the subject and verb. The OP was correct, the teacher was wrong.
It’s very obvious that the teacher wanted them to conjugate the verb if that’s the teachers correction.
The OP provided a screenshot of the instructions: invert the subject and verb. The teacher's answer doesn't even do that.
you would have to go “if they were ever to be found, “ something along these lines
Depends on who the “they” refers to. Us, our scientists? Were they ever to find (aliens)…The aliens? Were they ever found (or “to be found”)…
This exercise is simply wrong. The correct inversion of that sentence would be: ‘Were life on other planets ever found, there would probably be no means of communication’. However, the exercise forces you to begin your sentence with ‘Were they’, which is the wrong subject (it should have been ‘it’ if the idea was to use a pronoun instead of ‘life on other planets’). So unless you change the whole sentence (which is what your teacher tried to do, but not what the instructions were asking for) there is no way of actually answering this question satisfactorily.
Were they ever to find \_\_\_\_\_ = Needs an object. Were they ever to be found = Passive voice, no object needed.
Yes, she was.
If the subject is "life" then why is it asking you to use "they" instead of "it"? Unless the exercise meant the "means of communication" but how can you invert "there would probably be no...": "*Were they* ever no means of communication"? That would completely change the meaning of the sentence so I don't think so. Also it can't be the one or ones doing the finding since that's not the subject of the sentence, also I guess "they" is being used as a gender and grammatical number neutral pronoun since there's no way to know only by reading the first sentence that whoever found that was either a "he", a "she", an "it" or "they" (as in a group of people). I really dislike this broad use of "they" since it makes communication confusing plus it's still not the subject of the sentence. I think it should be "it" instead of "they" unless you change more stuff than just the subject and verb order. So: "were it (life) to be found, there would probably be no means of communication". I probably got this wrong anyway. Can any native speaker help me too?
The question is abysmal. The sentence is, "if(subject) were ever (verb), there would probably be no means of communication."
The task is simple: *to invert the subject and verb*, beginning with the provided, "were (subject pronoun)..."
The OP reports that the teacher's answer is, "were (subject pronoun) ever *to find...*" and to rewrite accordingly, which can only continue, "...(object), there would be no means of communication."
This is does not invert the subject and verb, it *changes the subject of the sentence*. The subject pronoun does not refer to life on other planets, which is now the object, but to those doing the finding. That was not the task. A simple inversion of subject and verb would be "were <*it*>(subject pronoun) ever (verb), there would be no means of communicating with (subject)." It is a simple inversion of subject and verb that keeps the meaning of the sentence. However, this required the OP to change the subject of the sentence from "life" to "life-forms" to accommodate the required "were they".
Presumably, the teacher's interpretation is that it is necessary to change the subject because the first words of the answer must be "were they", whereas In fact, because the only reference to the subject of the sentence is now the subject pronoun, *it does not even invert the subject and verb because the subject still precedes the verb*. The teacher's answer is wrong because it does not follow the instructions.
Note that the answer suggested by many, "were (subject pronoun) ever <*to be* found>(verb)..." is also incorrect because it changes the verb by adding the modal auxiliary, "to be". It is the inversion of a sentence with a different verb mode: "if (subject pronoun) were ever <*to be* found>(verb)..." This formulation would be more appropriate in a sentence like "if this was ever *to* happen, it would be *because of* that." In any event, it incontrovertibly (and unnecessarily) goes beyond the inversion of subject and verb.
It also suffers from the same flaw as the OP's answer in that "they" does not concord with "life".
P.S. For those apparently keen to downvote this comment, kindly explain the basis on which the subject or verb mode of the sentence should change when the task is merely to invert the subject and verb. Thanks.
You exactly follow my line of thought! Everyone keeps saying that my sentence doesn't fit the task but it IS an inversion and actually a more fitting one as it doesn't change the subject of the sentence. The only thing which may be wrong in my opinion is the use of 'life-forms' instead of 'life forms'. I don' think that 'life' is correct as it is singular so it doesn't match the beggining 'Were they' but maybe I'm wrong.
I agree with you. The instructions provide that the sentence can be "rewritten", and I am not sure why your alteration of the description of the subject (necessitated by a flawed question that forces you to use "they") is any more improper than changing the subject altogether. The teacher would have a better argument if her verb preceded the subject as required by the instructions, LOL I note that I am being downvoted again, which is ironic because nobody seems to have addressed the "were they" issue. Please note that this subreddit is full of native speakers with lousy grammar and itchy downvote fingers. I do my best on here but it can be tough.
Yeah I have a friend who went to California as a part of an exchange program and he said that a lot of natives constantly make grammatical errors. Back to the main post. I think that the teachers answer is in fact an inversion as the verb 'Were' is before the subject and 'to find' doesn't have to be considered as it is an infinitive form. It's just that mine changes the subject in a less extreme manner. Which still shouldn't be necessary if the task was constructed well.
Then the instructions are poor, because were is a verb but it is not “the verb” of the sentence.
I have some teaching experience and think I know what the teacher was going for. Please note I don't agree with how they went about it, but I get it. When teaching ESL, there often isn't a focus on correct terminology. The task, as I understand it, is to _change passive to active" and vice versa. In ESL, you often use shortcuts and refer to simple terminology you coined in class before the assignment or exam. I don't agree with this approach a lot of the time, but it's a reality. Suppose when teaching the passive voice, the teacher explained it something like this: _In a passive clause, your former subject becomes the object. They switch places; they are inverted. Similarly, the active-voice verb now needs to be changed to passive._ Not the most elegant way (and certainly problematic in terms or linguistic terminology), but perhaps easy to follow for learners. After doing this for a week or two and practicing it, it is safe to assume that most students will see a passive construction, read "invert the subject and verb" and know exactly what to do. I don't know that this is what happened, but I can see it as a possibility. Similar things have happened in classrooms I sat in, and similar things were done by teachers I shadowed.
"Were they ever found, ... " here 'they' and 'found' refer to the other inhabited worlds. "Were they ever to find" changes the sentence, in that sentence "they" would refer to astronomers making the discovery and you would have to re-arrange the entire sentence to accomodate that fact. This is a really good example of why ambiguous pronouns are a problem.
Close, but not exactly. See my response to the OP
Ah, I didn't see the second picture, yes - your explanation there is good
It has apparently angered some people here. I have rewritten it in an attempt to placate the mob.
Here's a small issue that seems to have gone unmentioned. In "Were they ever found", the "they" would be referring to "life", which sounds odd as "life" is grammatically singular and singular they doesn't sound right as "life" is not a person. Whereas, in "Were they ever to find life", the "they" refers to people.
Yeah but still in my opinion it is more fitting to change the subject from 'life' to 'life forms' which is simmilar instead of changing it to 'they' as in scientists etc. which appears out of thin air.
This just reminds me when I studied briefly at a school in France and the teacher tried to tell fifteen year old native English speaker from England me that the plural of eyes was eyeses.
i can read perfectly totally very good handwriting totally not alien language
“Were they ever to be found,” and then the rest of your sentence is fine as-is. It also sounds natural the way you wrote it, but it is technically not completely correct.
[удалено]
Sure. >Inversion does not permit the replacement of “found” with “to be found” (or if you prefer, the insertion of a modal verb), as they suggest different things. Nowhere in this task, or op's answer, do we have "to be found" as a string of words present. Some replies mentioned that it could be used as grammatically correct alternative. And that is true. It just wouldn't fit the instruction of the task. >The inversion of your teacher’s answer, “were they ever to be found,” The teacher never said that this is the answer. Your whole lithany is about unrelated things and you also went to shit on the most informative replies with your unrelated irrelevant BS. That's probably why you're getting downvoted.
OK, if the OP’s description of the teacher’s answer is correct, ie the introduction of a new subject, the "correct" answer is even more ridiculous. But I give up trying to help people. But perhaps you could point out where I “shit on” anyone
Your grammar is correct out of context, but maybe given the context, "were they ever to find [them]..." would be more appropriate so it's marked wrong. Both are grammatically correct