Re: Core case roles

On Tue, 13 Aug 2002 03:05, bnathyuw wrote:
>  --- julien eychenne <eychenne.j@...> wrote: >
>
<snip>
> > Do you mean we can say 'the bed sleeps two' for
> > example ?
>
> yep. one of my favourite things about the english
> language is its tendency to get active and passive
> muddled up ( and also the use of the passive with the
> active's indirect/prepositional object as subject : 'i
> was given a book', 'i could tell i was being talked
> about', 'she always liked being looked up to' &c. )
But that's one of the beauties of the whole shebang.  Mind you, you can say -
and be understood - "the house was abuilding" for "the house was being
built".  That used to be the standard way of indicating passive voice.  It
just seems that English is somewhat uncomfortable with the passive voice
without a medial voice, so uses the current passive forms to indicate a form
of medio-passive voice.

>
> bn
>
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