Re: Mediopassive/labile verbs; was: very confused - syntax question

Sally Caves wrote:

> That was my post, Raymond.  And I had always understood them to mean the
> same thing as well.  But then when I read Trask's definition, I came to
> the conclusion that there were two different constructions here that I
> wanted to distinguish, and I asked whether mediopassive and middle voice
> were in fact interchangeable.
The trouble arises because of the two uses of "mediopassive"; one to
specify a VOICE, the other to specify a MORPHOLOGY.  The latter
is general-purpose but rare (indeed, I never heard it before this
conversation); the former is commonly used, but
restricted to archaic IE langs (not just Greek but Sanskrit and
Hittite too), where it's typical for middle and passive
to be rendered with extremely similar or identical forms.

> I'm not interested in the terminology as
> it applies to ancient Greek.  I'm interested in finding the correct
> terminology to describe what appear to me to be two slightly different
> applications that would be useful for me in describing constructions in
> Teonaht, and for Jennifer in describing constructions in her language
"Correct" in such cases is in the eye of the terminologist.

> So obviously, there have been a number of attempts to name the
> construct that I've been calling "middle voice" in Teonaht, and I
> have felt the need to abandon it as a term when I read the _je me lave_
> definition.  The question:  "is medio-passive" as good a term as any
> FOR MY PURPOSES?  What its use is in ancient Greek is irrelevant to me.
Lojban uses "mode" and "modal" in a distinctly odd way, rooted in
its Loglan ancestry (which used a lot more terms in distinctly
odd ways).  If something's important, terminological buccaneering
(nice term I grabbed from Northrop Frye) may be a virtue as well
as a necessity.

--
John Cowan      http://www.ccil.org/~cowan              cowan@ccil.org
   Schlingt dreifach einen Kreis um dies! / Schliesst euer Aug vor heiliger Schau,
   Denn er genoss vom Honig-Tau / Und trank die Milch vom Paradies.
                        -- Coleridge / Politzer