French language Q&A Forum

Hi,

In a context outside these lessons, I was asked to put the following sentence in la voix passive:

"Le conducteur n'a pas pu arrêter le train à temps."

I thought it would be straightforward and answered as follows:

"Le train n'a pas été pu arrêter à temps par le conducteur."

But this was marked as false, with the correct answer being:

"Le train n'a pas pu être arrêter à temps par le conducteur."

I don't believe the use of la voix passive with modal verbs (pouvoir, devoir, vouloir) was covered explicitly in this lesson, so I wanted to ask if you could please explain these rules, since it seems they might differ from the rules presented here.

thanks, Scott

For some reason I can't reply to a specific response, so I'll have to post this as a seperate comment. 

This is a follow up question to Laura's translation of "She ought to really stop seeing him", which she wrote as "Elle devrait vraiment arreter de le voir." I'm wondering if the phrase "Elle devrait vraiment s'arreter de le voir" is also acceptable.