Middle Voice and Unaccusative Verbs in Technical English
5 exercises — practise unaccusative verbs that describe systems undergoing events without a stated agent.
0 / 5 completed
1 / 5
Which sentence correctly uses the unaccusative (subject-as-undergoer) form of "fail" to describe a build outcome?
"The build failed because of a missing dependency" is correct: "fail" is unaccusative here, meaning the build itself is the entity undergoing the failure, with no direct object, and the cause is expressed with "because of", not as a direct object or passive agent. Option A incorrectly forces "fail" into the passive voice as if it were transitive, which is unidiomatic ("fail" does not normally take a "by"-agent passive in this sense). Option C incorrectly treats "a missing dependency" as a direct object of "failed", which misrepresents the causal relationship. Option D scrambles the sentence into an ungrammatical passive.
2 / 5
Which sentence correctly uses "open" in its middle-voice sense to describe how a modal behaves, without naming an agent?
"The modal opens when a user clicks the settings icon" is correct: "open" in its middle-voice, intransitive use describes the modal undergoing a change of state without any passive marking or explicit agent — this is the natural, idiomatic way to describe UI behavior. Option B redundantly combines a passive "is opened" with an agentive "by the code", which is awkward and unnecessary given the simpler intransitive option. Option C incorrectly adds a reflexive "itself" and an agent, over-marking the sentence. Option D unnecessarily uses the passive continuous when the simple intransitive is standard and preferred.
3 / 5
Which sentence correctly contrasts the transitive causative use of "crash" with its unaccusative use?
"The null pointer exception crashed the application, and the application crashed shortly after startup" is correct: it shows both uses of "crash" — transitive/causative ("X crashed the application", where X is the cause and the application is the affected object) and unaccusative/intransitive ("the application crashed", where the application is simply the subject undergoing the event). Option B incorrectly passivizes both clauses, reversing the natural cause-effect roles. Option C swaps the roles, illogically making the application the cause of the exception. Option D garbles the causal relationship and tense.
4 / 5
Which sentence correctly uses the unaccusative form of "back up" to describe a message queue's state without naming a cause?
"The message queue backed up during the traffic spike" is correct: "back up" used intransitively describes the queue undergoing a build-up of unprocessed items, with the cause expressed as a time/circumstance adverbial ("during the traffic spike"), not as an agent. Option A uses the passive "was backed up", which can ambiguously suggest someone deliberately created a backup copy, a different meaning of "back up". Option C introduces an agent ("someone") that misrepresents the event as a deliberate action, again suggesting the backup-copy meaning. Option D incorrectly adds a reflexive pronoun and an agentive "by"-phrase, which is not idiomatic.
5 / 5
Which sentence correctly uses "scale" in its unaccusative, middle-voice sense to describe a system's own behavior under load?
"The service scales horizontally as traffic increases" is correct: "scale" used intransitively in the middle voice describes the service's inherent capacity to adjust itself, without naming an external agent — this is the standard, idiomatic way engineers describe scalable architecture. Option B unnecessarily passivizes the verb and adds a redundant reflexive "by itself". Option C awkwardly makes "horizontal scaling" the subject and forces "scale" transitive in a confusing, circular way. Option D incorrectly treats "traffic" as a passive agent doing the scaling, which misattributes agency.