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feature ?

From:claudio <claudio.soboll@...>
Date:Saturday, June 9, 2001, 5:52
hi !
id like to describe a feature here,
to get some critics.


the passive is a form which doesnt force the author to tell
the subject of an action.
this is useful for situations when we dont know the subject.
example :           "someone/someones(?) stole my car"
its easier to say : "my car was stolen"
the passive has the main function in language to omit a subject.
this is nice but alas, the passive gets abused of lazy speakers,
who dont want to tell the subject,
which is confusing and less information for the listener.
example : "lena has been kissed"
who kissed lena ? we want to know it. but perhaps the author dont
know it either. we have to figure it out with questions !
"can you tell me who kissed lena ?"
case 1: author : "well it was me"
or
case 2: author : "i dont want to tell you"

because of this "abuse" the passive is called "bad style".

so is it possible to get rid of that evil passive in a conlang ?
my potential idea is to create the *short* universal words/markers for:

  something(s) or someone(s) as subject or object which the author
  knows of/wants to tell/remembers of/ lets call it here: [marker1]

  something(s) or someone(s) as subject or object which the author
  dont knows of/dont wants to tell/dont remembers of/ lets call it here: [marker2]

the advantage of this could be that the listener can be sure wether to
ask the author for further details (who stole the car?)
or wether he dont.

author : "i ate [marker1] for breakfast yesterday"
its probable the author wants to shorten it up instead of lengthy
explanations
(lets say ate cornflakes with milk and peanutbutter , some eggs, drank
orange juice etc..<- pretty lentghy),
but we may ask him what it was he ate when we want to.

author :"i ate [marker2] for breakfast yesterday"
its probable the author has forgotten it.

in the sentence "my car was stolen (and i dont know who it was)",
[marker2] would be subject.
but "[marker2] stole my car" would be not optimum since the author
want to emphasize "car" with drag this "main-meaning-carrier" to the
front of the sentence.
the solution could be to allow the syntax: "my car [marker2] stole."
we can translate it with: "my car [they or he] stole"

are there other ideas how to omit the passive or about something
similar to these markers i mentioned, maybe existing in other
languages already ?

regards,
c.s.