Re: [tied] The Middle Voice.

--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:

> English does have verbs with middle meanings. "I shave, I dress

(up)", for example, or, with a different functional shade "We
kissed". The main functions of the mediopassive voice were

>
> passive "I am dressed (by someone else)"
> reflexive "I dress (myself)"
> reciprocal "We dress each other"
>

I have always understood that the true middle voice in English was
found in sentences such as-
This word translates badly into German.
The tune plays badly on a violin. etc

> The mediopassive voice could be used when the agent was not

important "He was/got killed" (whoever killed him, including
suicide). It also helped to make a normally transitive verb
intransitive "I shave, I drive", etc. In all cases the action affects
the subject of the sentence or is performed for his/her benefit.

>
> I don't believe PIE distinguished the middle and the passive

formally. Who says it did? When we say "passive" or "middle"
referrimng to PIE, that's usually shorthand for "mediopassive".

>
> Piotr
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: markodegard@...
> To: cybalist@...
> Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2001 6:24 AM
> Subject: [tied] The Middle Voice.
>
>
> I need a lesson on the middle voice.
>
> I've read that Hittite only had the active and mediopassive voices,
> but that residual PIE, at its breakup, had active, middle and

passive

> voices.
>
> It's difficult to explain the middle voice in English.
>
> I remember being taught in Greek class about the Greek middle

voice,

> with the rubric 'for it/myself'. I remember thinking 'I brushed my
> teeth' would probably be a Greek middle. It seems to require a verb
> that can describe an action done by the grammatical subject to

itself;

> something like Jocasta, just before expiring, exclaiming "I
> kill+[middle-ending]" would seem possible for 'I suicide'.
>
> What's the difference between the middle and mediopassive voice? Is
> there a better way to explain it?
>
> As I understand it, a middle voice verb looks to its agent,

explaining

> the action done by the agent, in a sense that is absolutely lacking

in

> English, that is, the agent (or grammatical subject) is not so much
> doing the action, as having the action done to it by the verb.
>
> This question arises from an article in the current JIES that
> addresses old PIE as an ergative language. This is "Lithuanian and
> Indo-European Parallels" by William R. Schmalstieg. I'll eventually
> get to this article in a later posting: I need to re-read the thing
> several times over. It presents some reconstructed PIE sentences in
> the 'active present' and 'middle preterit'. Reading between the

lines,

> I think Schmalsteig is saying old PIE (ergative stage) managed what

we

> today do in the active and passive voices by moving some statements
> into the middle voice, or maybe, the mediopassive, with the whole
> thing being wrapped up in the concept of 'transitivity'.
>
> Aggh! Ergativity!