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

Am Tue, 27 Feb 2007 19:07:26 -0000 schriebst du:

> --- 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.
>

That's the opposite of what I heard about the middle/passive story:
What they tell is that middle came first, acquired a passive meaning,
which at last prevailed in the daughter languages.

Joachim