I’m trying to understand what the general English description for 来られる would be.
I don’t think it’s: Got visitied…
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In the question:
私の牛乳を全部誰かに＿＿＿（飲まれた）
shouldn’t it be:
私の牛乳が全部誰かに＿＿＿
?
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Hi there, and welcome to the forums! That’s a really good question. Usually we want to attach が to the target of れる and られる sentences, but it is not necessary.
When something is just happening of its own accord, が can be attached to the object. However, in patterns that include 誰かに or really any ‘someone に’ construction, it implies that there is a ‘victim’ if you want to think of it that way. If there is a victim of the action, the standard construction is usually
Victim は, someone に something を された.
Hope this pattern becomes easier to spot from now on!
For this one, I would think ‘was come to’, as 来る really only implies travel. 訪れられた would be closer to the traditional sense of ‘was visited’.
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Could you use that in a sentence please?
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- 大きな犬に近くに来られて怖い思いをしました。
- I was come close to by a big dog and it was a scary experience.
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Ah gotcha! Thank you 
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Hi all, I find myself confused by the intricacies of passive form pretty often. The thing that gets me most is the use of に to describe the “actor” of a passive sentence. I understand that generally the subject of a passively-conjugated verb in a sentence is the “receiver” of an action performed by the “actor” that may or may not be explicitly made clear. If we do want to specify a someone or something as performing the action on the subject, we can mark it with に.
I find that in practice this rule is broken pretty often, unless I am misinterpreting the grammatical rules or passive conjugations entirely. For instance, this sentence appears as an example in the ”こそ” grammar point:
それこそ 僕に与えられた使命だと思っています
I think that is why I was chosen for the errand.
Shouldn’t 僕に be 僕が or 僕は in this sentence in order to fit that translation? From my understanding of passive sentence structure, に refers to the person performing the action. But “僕” is being chosen in this context. So if the subject is passively receiving an action, why are they being marked with に？
に can mark the actor in a passive construction.
に can also mark the target of 与える.
So this sentence is technically ambiguous.
But it doesn’t really sound like something one would say about a mission given by the speaker to some unnamed third party, so it’s probably the second case where 僕 is the target for 与える.
If the entity that gave 僕 the mission was stated, it could be marked with から and there would be no ambiguity.
が would mark the thing that is being 与えられる’d, which is 使命. In this sentence it has become the head of the relative clause instead, but if this wasn’t a relative clause e.g. in a sentence like 僕に使命が与えられた, then 使命 would be what gets marked with が.
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