Some of the fruit here sells very well.

[tedmc]

I find that weird too. "The house was sold yesterday" sounds much more natural to me.

 

[Matthew Wai]

I meant that in the 1930s, only "was sold" may have been considered correct.

If so, I think it should have been written as '... in the early 1930s, it was still considered correct only to use the formal passive: "was sold"', but I am not a teacher.

I find that weird too. "The house was sold yesterday" sounds much more natural to me.

To me too. Perhaps this is because all of us (tzfujimino, tedmc and Matthew) are not native speakers.

 

[tzfujimino]

Well, it's just that the sentence sounds odd to me.

1. X sold well.
2. X sold for Y dollars.
3. X sold yesterday.

#1 and #2 sound OK to me, but #3 doesn't.
It's probably because of the adverbial that follows the verb "sold".

 

[Matthew Wai]

What if 'out' was added after 'sold' in #3?

 

[TheParser]

[1] I think it should have been written as '... in the early 1930s, it was still considered correct only to use the formal passive: "was sold"', but I am not a teacher.


[2] Perhaps this is because all of us ... are not native speakers.

***** NOT A TEACHER *****

[1] You write much more precisely than I. Congratulations!

[2] Not necessarily.

Perhaps there are still some native speakers who prefer to leave "The house sold yesterday for $25,000,000" and "Your item ships tomorrow" to the business people who delight in snappy phrases.

Maybe many ordinary people might be more comfortable with the good old-fashioned formal passive.

 

[tzfujimino]

What if 'out' was added after 'sold' in #3?

That works for me.

 

[Raymott]

"The house sold yesterday" is quite acceptable in AusE.

 

[MikeNewYork]

In AmE as well. The objections are nonsense.

 

[Tdol]

I agree that in 2015 many native speakers would have no trouble with "That house sold for $25,000,000 yesterday."

I am guessing that when Professor Jespersen wrote that in the early 1930s, it was still considered correct to use the formal passive: "was sold."

Today, both are widely used. The passive is perfectly correct. I don't go along with the negative stylistic view some people take of the passive and I regard it as an essential form. It can be used to be evasive, and it is not always wrong to do this, but to extend this to a general call for replacing passive forms with the active is simply misguided IMO.

 

[probus]

'The house sold yesterday' is an interesting sentence, but I'd avoid using it.

You'd be alone among the millions of North American real estate agents. It's absolutely cast iron everyday usage