Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 576, 577):
Here the relation of passive to active is different, because a conative verb, although not constituting a separate happening, does in fact represent a behavioural process, and it retains its behavioural sense when the clause is passive. Thus an elaborating active/passive pair such as people started to accept her/she started to be accepted is not paralleled by the corresponding extending pair
(people) | tried | + β to accept | (her)
(she) | tried | + β to be accepted |
(see analysis in Figure 8-7). Examples:
He tried to be pleased at the idea.
Francesca and Grazie were habitual committee chairmen and they usually managed to be elected cochairmen, equal bosses, of whatever PTA or civic project was being launched.
