Under “nous avons pu réinvestir les dons qui nous étaient parvenus”, the “voix passive” lesson is listed beneath it, and not the “plus que parfait” lesson.
But isn’t it that case that this line is an example of plus que parfait, and not of voix passive?
This may seem like splitting hairs, but I find the listed lessons very useful even just from their titles, to guide my understanding of the grammar.
Alan's right. Let's have a closer look at the sentence. First, let's disambiguate the personal pronoun nous by replacing it with a concrete person and be a bit more literal in the translation:
Les dons qui étaient parvenus à Marie. -- The donations that reached Marie.
From that it's straightforward to identify the following grammatical objects:
qui is the subject of the relative clause and refers back to les dons.
à Marie is the indirect object which, in the original sentence is nous.
étaient parvenus is the 3rd person plural (because of les dons) plus que parfait of the verb parvenir.
Seems to me that both are in this sentence . The second part - “qui nous étaient parvenus” - passive voice ?
Wouldn’t passive voice have to be “nous étions + [past participle]”?
I think the sentence is “[COI] + [PQPF] ”.
Parvenir is an intransitive verb, so it can't form a passive. In the passive, the subject (i.e. "les dons") is the implied object of the verb, but that's not possible here. It can only be the PQP.
Under “nous avons pu réinvestir les dons qui nous étaient parvenus”, the “voix passive” lesson is listed beneath it, and not the “plus que parfait” lesson.
But isn’t it that case that this line is an example of plus que parfait, and not of voix passive?
This may seem like splitting hairs, but I find the listed lessons very useful even just from their titles, to guide my understanding of the grammar.
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