What's going on when a -ku godan verb like "叩く" gets conjugated to "叩かれ"?


Like what's the exact conjugation breakdown going on there? I've spent days
scouring various things and I can't for the life of me figure out the exact
breakdown causing a "かれ".

I'm not leaving off any conjugation bits, so it's definitely not me misreading
something like 叩かれた.

If you could explain what's going on in general terms rather than specifically
-ku verbs, that might be more helpful, but I'm at my wits' end and will
honestly take anything at this point.

> 力いっぱい背中を叩かれ、大介は思わずよろめいた。

Two friends, the person strongly hitting 大介 on the back is a friend trying to
cheer him up. He did it without warning, but it's not aggressive. The sentence
is narrative and describing the situation, non-spoken.




The conjugation is the passive voice of the verb 叩く, which becomes 叩かれる in the
passive. Usually, it would connect to another clause in the て form (叩かれて), but
the continuative form (連用形), which is 叩かれ, is also used as a way to connect
clauses, especially in written Japanese.

