Re: OT: Mildy OT: "Freedom kiss"?

On Saturday 15 March 2003 02:17 pm, you wrote:
> Tim May wrote:
> > Just out of interest, what about those phrasings was supposed to be
> > particularly Australian?  (I find them fine, although I'd probably
> > insert "themselves" after "establish" in the second example.)
>
> 'Another Australian characteristic is the passiveless passive:
> "tax-assessments issue", "interest rates reduce", "courses offer at
> universities"[*] and "patients or their symptons present at their
> doctors' surgeries": passive in meaning, but not in expression.
I would tend to classify that as middle/reflexive voice.  The object is
identical with the subject, it's just not expressed.

Wesley Parish

 To give
> two recent examples from ABC [Australian Broadcasting Corp., the
> government-owned broadcasting corp, like the BBC] news programs, "People
> weren't involved in trade during the war" and "The cost structure is
> making it very difficult for businesses to establish there". It is not
> that Australians are trying to avoid saying who did something, rather,
> many verbs which must be passive for such contexts in other types of
> English need not be so in Australian English, even in a formal
> situation.' (From an article called 'Strine' by David and Maya Bradley,
> but I don't know what it was in or where it's from.)
>
> *: this one seems to be ungramatical to me. I would prefer 'courses
> offered at universities'. Perhaps in more context, it'd be okay, but
> like that, it certainly isn't.
>
> Tristan.
--
Mau e ki, "He aha te mea nui?"
You ask, "What is the most important thing?"
Maku e ki, "He tangata, he tangata, he tangata."
I reply, "It is people, it is people, it is people."