this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2025
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"left" is used all the time where no one was purposely doing anything. It doesn't imply that at all.
My friend's death from COVID left me saddened.
So you are saying my friend acted with some agency to make me sad in that sentence? The subject of "left alone" is unspecified but a very normal reading is that just the general situation left the baby alone, or maybe left alone by all of society. It's a pretty tortured reading to declare that the mother was intended to be the subject to that verb.