Re: Ergativity Reference Done

From:    David Peterson <ThatBlueCat@...>
> One thing I'd like to ask (since I haven't looked
> up the loony thread) is if valency-reduction systems
> were every discussed with the loony system.  It's
> neither a passive nor an antipassive, it seems,
> but something I'm calling an ambipassive.  So let's
> say you have this:
>
> Kelina-r sapu.  "The woman-UNI. sleeps."
> Kelina lamu palino.  "The woman-DUA. pets the panda-DUA."
>
> Then the ambipassive would be this:
>
> Kelina-r lamuto.  "The woman-UNI. pet-MORPH."
>
> That "MORPH" means "valency-reduction morphology",
> and the sentence would be translated as *either*
> "The woman is being petted" or "The woman is petting
> (something)", depending on context.  Perhaps a
> definition that would cover both bases would be
> "The woman is a participant in a petting event".
This system looks very much to me like the Ancient Greek Middle
voice, which was distinct from the passive only in the aorist.
In all other tenses, the middle could mean either "X Ys for himself"
or "X is Yed". (That is what they say, anyways.  I suspect there
were lexicosemantic restrictions on those interpretations.) Greek,
of course, used the nominative case for the single argument of the
detransitivized verb, and so in that sense it is different.

I still find the terms "unitive" and "duative" somewhat awkward.

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