Hello~
So, there is this example sentence for 促す:
医者は禁煙を促されたが、なかなか実行に移せなかった
And this is the official translation:
The doctor urged me to quit smoking, but I struggled to follow through.
My question is, since the verb is in the passive form 促される, shouldn’t it read like the doctor was urged to quit smoking? Instead of the doctor being the one doing the urging?
I’m not sure if that’s the case here, but as I understand, sometimes passive form can be used as active for politeness:
Yeah, it’s the case.
Got it! thank you
My take would be slightly different, in that by the end of this part we don’t know what the subject of the sentence is 「医者は禁煙を促されたが」and then in this part the speaker shows absolute knowledge of state of mind (there’s no そう、らしい、いった or whatever), and thus must be talking about themselves 「なかなか実行に移せなかった」.
So you’re saying it’s not honorific られる?
So suffering passive?
I would just say, it’s fine for subjects to change mid-sentence, so it’s not a rule that if the second half is about himself, therefore the first half must be too. But suffering passive does make sense to me, just looking at it alone.
Sure, I think the structure of the sentence is respectful, and that’s why the passive is used, but the subject is still the speaker and that’s where られる points. In any case, “the doctor was urged to give up smoking but I have not really followed through” would be a bit of a stretch.
In the example from trunklayer, “A talk from Prof. Hayashi on Japanese Universities was received” would be the English version of the honorific passive. The passive hasn’t become active, it’s just referring to an assumed audience.
I’m not really sure it can work as both honorific and suffering passive at the same time, if that’s what you are suggesting.
What about when the other party is definitely not a passive object? In something like どちらに行かれましたか that’s simply られる honorific with no passive component.
I’ve never really heard about any attempt to interpret the honorific as passive. My understanding was they’re just separate definitions of られる, along with the others, like spontaneity and capability.
You’re changing the subject and just making it more unnatural. It’s a lose lose. The sentence provided in the resource trunk posted is both more accurate and natural. The sentence subject should be the professor, but you’re making it the 話
I mean, in this case that’s completely natural formal English, and I haven’t changed the Japanese at all…
But, OK, I guess I’ve misunderstood. In English the passive is used to shift the subject away from the person being respected: “The king was returned to the palace”, but the Japanese is just an honorific form of the verb, rather than being passive per se.
Every day is a school day 
Yeah, see my reply to Vanilla, I think it’s just a misunderstanding on my part. I should know better than to think in terms of English analogs.
I think in that case Prof. Hayashi would have been marked with に instead of は。
[topic/subject]は[agent]に[verb]られた。
Also, the non-honorfic use of passive with 話す in that sentence wouldn’t make much sense to me, because then it would mean that the professor themself was spoken by someone else 
I mean, the true non-honorific passive form cannot have direct object, can it? How would you translate [something]を話された in true, non-honorific passive? [something]を話した – means to speak [something]. If you change it to true, non-honorific passive – you would have to change を to は or が… If を remains – it is, in my opinion, a clear indication that the passive is not used for passivity…
The true non-honorific passive usage of 話す in that example, in my opinion, would be:
日本の大学のことは林先生に話された。
