Re: [tied] The Middle Voice.

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 7179
Date: 2001-04-20

I agree as far as Ancient Greek is concerned, but I was talking about _PIE_ mediopassives, and _their_ use was certainly more general. Of course English has no category "middle". My point is that a PIE mediopassive would have been used to express the meaning of English "I shave every morning", and probably also of "I drove to work" with intransitive "drove".
 
Piotr
 
 
----- Original Message -----
From: petegray
To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Friday, April 20, 2001 9:08 AM
Subject: Re: [tied] The Middle Voice.

>English does have verbs with middle meanings. "I shave, I dress (up)", for
example,

I think it is pushing it a bit to say these have "middle meaning".  The
concept is helpful (necessary!) in describing classical Greek, but doesn't
have much meaning for English, and it could be misleading to suggest these
verbs be interpreted that way.

I also repeat that although the middle spills over into passive and
reflexive uses in Greek, that is not its main use .

Peter