Breakdown of Ist die Waffe auf dem Schreibtisch gesichert worden?
sein
to be
auf
on / to (down/up to a level)
der Schreibtisch
the desk
die Waffe
the weapon
werden
to be (passive auxiliary + past participle)
sichern
to secure
Questions & Answers about Ist die Waffe auf dem Schreibtisch gesichert worden?
Why do we use worden here instead of geworden?
Both are past participles of the verb werden. We use geworden in active sentences to mean 'has become' (for example: Er ist alt geworden). However, in the passive voice, when combining it with another past participle like gesichert, we drop the ge- prefix and just use worden. This is a special rule for the passive Perfekt tense.
Why are gesichert and worden grouped together at the very end of the sentence?
To form a yes/no question, the conjugated helping verb (Ist) takes the first position. All other verbs are pushed to the very end of the sentence. In the passive Perfekt tense, the past participle of the main action (gesichert) is always placed immediately before the passive helping verb (worden).
Why is it auf dem Schreibtisch and not auf den Schreibtisch?
The preposition auf is a two-way preposition. It takes the dative case when it describes a fixed location (answering 'where?'), and the accusative case for movement towards a destination (answering 'where to?'). Because the weapon is already sitting on the desk, it is a fixed location, so we use the dative form dem.
In this passive sentence, is die Waffe the subject or the object?
die Waffe is the grammatical subject. In an active sentence, the weapon would be the object someone is securing. But in the passive voice, the person doing the action is removed, and the thing receiving the action gets promoted to the subject. That is why die Waffe is in the nominative case.
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