Re: The Meanings of Middle, or mana kartam

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham" <richard@...> wrote:

>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@> wrote:
>
> > > Still your original question remains: Why should a language have
> > > active and medium, but not the passive.
>
> > That's also a good question. My original question was, why does
> > the middle have such peculiar semantics?
>
> Verbs can be neutral as to active v. passive, with the difference
> made by the presence or an absence of an explicit object. Chinese is
> often cited as a clear example of a language where transitive verbs
> with active meaning require explicit objects. I can't decide
> whether the next point is relevant, but recall that in an ergative
> language the voice contrast is not active v. passive but active v.
> antipassive.
>
> Might not the middle v. active distinction be that the middle
> expresses an interest (focus?) on the grammatical subject?

That's the classical formulation. It doesn't help me relate it to
anything else.

Let's look at Fillmore's deep cases. The problem with the IE middle is
that it has the formal subject as both A(gent) and B(eneficiary) at
the same time, ie *I* do it *for me*. That's weird. The passive only
has O(bject), same as the impersonal.

>I can't square this with the notion of the middle being impersonal.

It's impersonal in the sense that it doesn't mention the Agent, same
as the passive.

Come to think of it, I have falsely identified the accusative object
of the impersonal sentence as the Agent, it is of course still the
object. I'll rephrase:

An original impersonal construction with the accusative
'illum aspectum' "him (there is) seen"
gives the passive sense,
an original impersonal construction with the dative
'illui aspectum' "for-him (there is) seen"
gives the middle sense (part of it);
when case-changed to
'ille aspectum'
it has both senses.
In the latter case we actually need the double sense
"by-him for-him (there is) seen"
which is a narrower interpretation than
"for-him (there is) seen";
perhaps since the Beneficiary is now in the nominative, he is assumed
to have initiated the action?


Torsten