"___ was a song sung by […]" or "___ was a song sang by […]"? [closed]

Solution 1:

This is a past participle, there is no ambiguity here. Sung. The song is sung, not sang. You can truncate the sentence next time you have a doubt: you can write X was a song sung. But not X was a song sang. He sang a song that was sung by him.

Solution 2:

After doing more research, I've come to this conclusion: It is sung (the past participle), not sang (the past tense); according to the New Oxford American Dictionary, a past participle is as follows.

the form of a verb, typically ending in -ed in English, that is used in forming perfect and passive tenses and sometimes as an adjective, e.g., looked in have you looked? and lost in lost property.

My example sentence is in a passive voice, as the subject (the song) undergoes the action (sing) (rather than an active voice, which "attributes the action of a verb or thing which it logically proceeds" (New Oxford American Dictionary, ᴀᴄᴛɪᴠᴇ sense 4)).

In other words, the song is sung by the subject rather than the subject sang the song.

An example of that sentence being worded in an active voice would be:

"[Subject] sang the song [object 1 (song)]."

The subject becomes an object and the object becomes a subject.

Passive voice

The song More is sung by Hasely.

Active voice

Hasely sang the song More.

The dictionary definition I cited above also referred to a perfect tense. Perfect tenses are formed in English when one uses had or have (They have been building since morning (present perfect); They had been building since morning (past perfect); They will have been building since morning (future perfect). Been is the past participle being used in those examples.

Past participles act as adjectives — if you can replace a verb with an adjective (like likable) while just leaving the necessary subjects and verbs, then the verb should be a past participle.

This works:

More is awesome.

("by Hasley" isn't needed in the sentence as it already has a subject (More) and verb (is))

But this doesn't:

Hasely likable [the song More].

By replacing the verb of the actively voiced sentence with an adjective, you aren't leaving any other verbs to keep the sentence valid.