Re: [tied] Re: The Meanings of Middle, or mana kartam

----- Original Message -----

From: Joachim Pense

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Monday, February 26, 2007 11:01 AM

Subject: Re: [tied] Re: The Meanings of Middle, or mana kartam

<snip>

What about this:

Impersonal becomes _passive_, either direct or indirect.

accusative -> nominative: someone beats me (imp.) => I'm beaten
dative -> nominative : someone gives me a book => I'm given a book

Reflexive becomes _medium_, either direct or indirect.

accusative -> nominative: I beat myself -> I beat+MED
dative -> nominative: I give a book to myself -> I give+MED book

Still your original question remains: Why should a language have
active and medium, but not the passive.

Joachim

 

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The passive is a totally a totally superfluous grammatical grace-note. There is nothing which cannot be expressed by the active and its subheading reflexive/middle.

If we can accept the idea that the earliest verb was unipersonal, uninflected for (only one) person, this all becomes a bit more understandable.

"The speaker beats . . ."; "the listener beats . . .".

With these two, and "someone beats . . .", the implication is that a second entity receives the beating. If we say "someone beats him", the implication is that "someone" and "him" are not the same. In those rare instances where they are, either a differentiated form for "him" or an inflection would be necessary (reflexive/medium).

Patrick

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