Paraphrasing "There was also found"

Question

Look at this sentence:

There was also found a significant interaction effect between gender and age groups

The part "There was also found" gives about 50 million records when you google it with quotations, but the editor of the journal I submitted my manuscript in, wrote in the review that this sentence "is awkwardly phrased". I have two questions:

1) Is this sentence really awkwardly phrased?

2) What would be a good paraphrasing for the sentence

You think you can't get 50 million hits on awkwardly phrased English? Dream on. In any case, you've left out the subject of the sentence, but let's suppose it is "a box of rocks." You would be better off saying "A box of rocks was also found" than "There was also found a box of rocks." — Robusto, Mar 14 '15 at 11:13
Yes, you should give us your whole sentence if you want useful answers. But your reviewer might just be biased against passive voice. Humor him, or tell him to get over it. Passive voice has its uses; it is not always wrong. — Brian Hitchcock, Mar 14 '15 at 11:25
@BrianHitchcock that's very unlikely. The passive voice is very often used in scientific writing. It is expected, in fact. — terdon, Mar 14 '15 at 13:19
Can we have the whole sentence please? It's difficult to make a sensible judgement otherwise — Araucaria - Him, Mar 14 '15 at 13:22
"There was also found, in the suburbs, a man who could speak Greek" is no less grammatical than "There was also found to be a serious shortage of antivenin", but the advantage of the second example is that people actually talk that way. — Edwin Ashworth, Mar 14 '15 at 13:41
While you're revising, drop "effect": "a significant interaction between gender and age groups was also found." (Unless there's some difference between an "interaction effect" and an "interaction" that I don't understand.) — Peter Shor, Mar 14 '15 at 16:16
@Araucaria Could the OP's example be considered to be a candidate for passive existential? :D — F.E., Mar 14 '15 at 17:40
@f.e. Maybe it could, but with a small grammatical mistake in it! ;) — Araucaria - Him, Mar 14 '15 at 22:48
@Araucaria My comment was made before he edited his question. — Ian MacDonald, Mar 16 '15 at 11:10
@Araucaria Tomorrow is today! :D -- (aside: "There was also found in the boy's wet knapsack a half-drowned German shepherd puppy with one floppy ear", does that sound acceptable? Do you suppose the locative phrase could be a significant factor on the acceptability of something like this?) — F.E., Mar 16 '15 at 20:29
@F.E. Funny you should say that, 'cuz I wrote something about that to you last night before our internet stopped working. Am watching TV with GF right now and might get back to you a bit later .... — Araucaria - Him, Mar 16 '15 at 21:05
There was also found @Araucaria 's answer post, er, where? :) — F.E., Mar 19 '15 at 16:33
@f.e.It's half-written and deleted at the bottom of the page. Main reason is, can't work out why it needs a locative complement or something like that to improve its felicity. Heavy NP should be enough on its own, but it ain't :( — Araucaria - Him, Mar 19 '15 at 16:35
@F.E. Any ideas? There's obviously a difference in meaning between the two potential sentences, but I still can't see exactly why a LC is needed here ... — Araucaria - Him, Mar 19 '15 at 16:38
@Araucaria Er, I don't have enough rep-points on EL&U to see deleted posts. -- As to why the addition of a locative element can often make an existential more acceptable, there have been some mentionings about that in various places, if I remember right. I was hoping to read up on it in your answer post. :) — F.E., Mar 19 '15 at 16:42
@Araucaria (cont) As you already know (but other readers might not): In general, adding extra elements, making elements heavier, moving elements about, them are things that can be done to make something that's basically ungrammatical become more acceptable (er, "grammatical"). I think there have also been proposed reasons as to why a locative is so helpful here for existentials. — F.E., Mar 19 '15 at 16:46
@Araucaria What were the 2 potential sentences? Was one the OP's version, and the 2nd as "There was also a significant interaction effect found* between gender and age groups"*? — F.E., Mar 19 '15 at 16:59
@F.E. Well, the question's changed a bit (actually, it doesn't quite make sense any more ...) But OP originally asked whether "There was also found ..." was awkward/ungrammatical. So it could have been either the sentence the OP actually wrote (a bit awkward without some kind of LC), or it could be a passive, where the subject would be the "raised object" of the counterpart active voice catenative complement construction . "*There was found to be a significant interaction effect between gender and age groups*" as a version of ... — Araucaria - Him, Mar 19 '15 at 17:06
@F.E. "*We found there to be a significant interaction effect between gender and age groups*" — Araucaria - Him, Mar 19 '15 at 17:06
@Araucaria Oh, right. Where the 1st version is the matrix passive of the 2nd. The active "We found there X" has the passive "There was found X". :D -- EDIT: But wait, is that a passive existential? Ah so confuzed and all. — F.E., Mar 19 '15 at 17:22

score 3 · Accepted Answer · edited Mar 16 '17 at 16:37

3

It is most certainly awkward, at the very least. What you're looking for is We also found X or X was also found but not there. . .

Unfortunately, Google is not the right tool for deciding whether something is correct English or not. Google NGrams, which query a corpus of published works as opposed to random internet musings, while far from perfect, are a much better choice:

As you can see in the image above there are relatively few occurrences of there was also found and essentially none in the latter part of the century. Looking at specific examples from the 1880s, it does indeed seem as though the form was used at the time. However, today it is virtually non-existent.

So, yes, your journal's editor is quite right, that is an awkward phrase and you should change it to X was also found or simply, there was also X dropping the found altogether,

edited Mar 16 '17 at 16:37

Community

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answered Mar 14 '15 at 13:18

terdon

21,559

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Unfortunately, your Ngram is not as pertinent as it might seem. "There was also found" is going to be much less frequent than "We also found" because the former is derived from a very specific passive construction obtained by passivising the subject of an infinitive clause to the subject position of the matrix clause verb phrase, whereas the latter can occur in any type of finite clause, whether in a matrix clause or a subordinate clause, and which is also going to be more prevalent because it is not passive voice. – Araucaria - Him Mar 15 '15 at 02:27
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Are you related to Sir Humphrey Appleby? – terdon Mar 15 '15 at 02:52
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Fair point. Ok, We also found is part of a very common construction. There was also found is part of a much rarer, but still perfectly normal construction. We found can occur in many positions in the sentence. There was found is restricted to a very few. The relative frequency of the two doesn't therefore imply that one is more grammatical than the other - any more than we should infer that that because the word I is more frequent, it is therefore superior to the word pterodactyl. – Araucaria - Him Mar 15 '15 at 13:05
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@Araucaria thanks for the translation :). You're quite right, of course. What I would like to show is that there was also found NOUN is very uncommon. The NGram I show is very far from conclusive, more useful are the individual results for there was also found which are all archaic usages. – terdon Mar 15 '15 at 19:34

Paraphrasing "There was also found"

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