From: Jens Elmegård Rasmussen
Message: 47637
Date: 2007-02-27
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
[Joachim Pense:]
> > Still your original question remains: Why should a language have
> > active and medium, but not the passive.
[Torsten Pedersen:]
> That's also a good question. My original question was, why does the
> middle have such peculiar semantics?
I think there is a simple answer to this: The semantics of the middle
is what is left of the original passive category. As new expressions
specifically used of the passive developed the old form was pushed
back to the fringes, so that the semantic range of the middle voice
ends up being a patchwork of discontinuous special usages, i.e. all
the secondary usages of the category. There remain however plenty of
evidence that the middle voice also included the passive and even had
the passive for its central zone of employment. So, the middle is,
more than anything, a displaced passive. I think that explains all the
problems that have been raised here.
Jens