How to understand this use of “sareru” in 「植物が成長を妨げられる」?

Question

What does this mean?

植物が成長を妨げられる。

Can I get a more detailed overlook of 貰わせる and rareru and saseru and all those things depending on whether wo ni ga or whatever is used. It's really frustrating to not be able to understand how their relations work with each other and who you are referring to.

For example:

ネロが家族を殺された。

Does that mean that Nero had his family killed (His family was killed by someone else and they got killed.)?

Answer 1

植物が成長を妨げられる

OP - What does this mean?

• "[The] plant[s] had [their] growth stunted." (by something)

ネロが家族を殺された.

OP - Does that mean that Nero had his family killed (His family was killed by someone else and they got killed.) ?!?

• "Nero had [his] family killed."

Not meaning specifically that he asked someone to kill his family, but rather that he had this happen to him. He received the result of the action.

(Though Roman Emperor Nero did kill his mother, so there might be other possible interpretations.)

を＋…られる・される（を＋受身形）is usually indicating that the subject/topic is not the actor performing the action, but rather is the receiver of the result of the action (usually something undesirable).

There is a very good explanation in Japanese about this kind of construction here:
http://www.tomojuku.com/blog/passive/passive-4/

Answer 2

Thanks for your responses.

So basically, there are both indirect passive and direct passive

俺たちは(ネロに)殺されかけたんだ。 direct

and

俺たちは(妻に)(兄弟を)殺された。 indirect

The direct says we were almost killed by Nero, while the indirect explains that we had one of our brothers killed by our mother (we didn't necessarily have a part in his killing).

If you would only write 俺たちは殺された, then there wouldn't be possible for us to tell whether it was direct or indirect passive, but I think it would be safe to assume that it was a direct passive, at least judging from the context and the fact that you need more information to describe an indirect passive.

Again, thanks for your link about passives, helped a lot.

Btw, how do I log out? This is an alt account because Stack Exchange doesn't allow me to find forgotten accs but instead has me make new accounts. Thanks.