The use of the agentive by-object. § 72. The use of the agentive by-object is highly restricted, it occurs in one case out of five, and even less frequently in colloquial speech and imaginative

§ 72. The use of the agentive by-object is highly restricted, it occurs in one case out of five, and even less frequently in colloquial speech and imaginative prose. However, when it does occur, the by-object is of great communicative value, and its elimination would often make the meaning of the verb incomplete and the sentence devoid of meaning.

The agent may be a living being, or any thing or notion that can be the source of the action.

The whole scene was being enacted by puppets.

In some areas the picture has been barely touched by the brush.

I was wounded by a landmine.

The distant mountain had been formed by fire and water.

How much was she influenced by that fake idea?

Besides a noun and very rarely a pronoun, a by-object may be a gerundial phrase or complex, or a subordinate clause.

I was then awakened only by knocking on the window and Annie telling the person responsible to go off.

She didn’t really know anything about people, she was always being taken in by what they told her.

Owing to its communicative value and the final position in the sentence, the by-object may be expanded, if necessary, to an extent that is hardly possible in the subject group, as in this commentary on Cezanne's painting:

“The Card Players.” The subject of this painting of two peasants playing cards was probably inspired by a similar composition by one of the brothers de Pack, French painters of the seventeenth century whose work Cezanne admired.

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