From: tgpedersen
Message: 47576
Date: 2007-02-23
>Tsk, tsk. I just learned that what is the passive in Latin was in
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Joachim Pense <jo-01@> wrote:
> >
> > Am Sat, 03 Feb 2007 16:28:43 -0000 schriebst du:
> >
> > > The semantics of the middle has always escaped me. He did it for
> > > himself vs. he did it? Why would a language find that
> > > distinction so important that it needed a separate category? And
> > > why would that category at times turn into a passive?
> > >
> >
> > I'd like to know more on that exact question as well.
> >
> > Lehmann's book on PIE syntax
> > <http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/books/pies00.html> has
> > something on the matter; he ascribes it to PIE having been an OV
> > language and the switch to SVO in the daughter languages (which he
> > calls "the dialects").
> >
> > I just started reading the online version of this book; I did not
> > find a real answer there yet, in particular why OV should imply
> > the middle, but I am confident something is in one of the many
> > chapters I did not read yet.
>
>
> Hm. I used to think the grown-ups had all the answers too, if you'll
> pardon the simile. I should have thought of my own solution above
> (middle as once impersonal, with transition of focused NP to
> nominative from dative or instrumental) a long time ago. Estonian
> has an impersonal voice, which of course exists only in the 3rd
> person 'sind oodatakse' "you are expected", cf 'sa ootad' "you
> wait". Note that the subject 'you' in 'you are expected' is in the
> partitive ('sind') in Estonian, a case that is used for the
> non-existent accusative (similarly to what is the case in Slavic
> languages); the equivalent (bad) German would be 'Dich ist
> erwartet'. For that matter, the PPIE impersonal voice which became
> the PIE middle might have been construed with an accusative too.