Is "The station was arrived by him" correct?
Nikhat tries converting "He arrived at the station" to passive and writes "The station was arrived by him". Her brother says this sentence cannot be made passive at all. Is her brother right?
Who do you think is right? Pick one.
The answer: Yes, her brother is right
Why
Nikhat has correctly followed the passive-conversion steps that worked in every earlier example — find the object, move it to the front, add "was ... by". The step she couldn't have known to check first is whether the original sentence even HAS an object to move. "Bit" in "the dog bit the man" has a direct object ("the man", the thing being bitten) — these are called transitive verbs. "Arrived" in "he arrived at the station" has no direct object at all; "at the station" is describing WHERE he arrived, not something the arriving was done TO — these are intransitive verbs. Without an object to promote into a new subject, there's nothing for the passive voice to rearrange, and "the station was arrived by him" ends up meaning something nonsensical, as if the station itself were the target of an action. Test: try the same thing with other intransitive verbs — "he slept", "she laughed", "they arrived" — none of these can be made passive either, for the identical reason: no object exists to become the new subject. Yes, her brother is right: only verbs that take a direct object (transitive verbs) can be made passive — "arrive" has none, so this sentence simply has no passive form.
On Socho, you explain your thinking out loud and a coach asks about YOUR reasoning — one question a day, free, in Hindi, Hinglish or English.
Try a question on Socho →More disagreements in Active and Passive Voice