Re: The Meanings of Middle, or mana kartam

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Jens Elmegård Rasmussen <elme@...> wrote:

>
> --- 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.

Saying that the odd semantics of the middle is one of the many senses
of the original middle removes the objection that it is an odd
language which has a separate form with such an odd semantics. But
does not even try to explain the oddness of the semantics of that
sense of the original middle: "he does it for himself". Why the
original middle had these two senses, and how (if at all) they are
related isn't explained that way. That just sweeps the problem under
the carpet. My proposal does try to explain the passive and the middle
sense from just one construction.


Torsten