Re: Test for middle voice?

    --- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Aidan Grey <taalenmaple@Y...> wrote:
> [snip]
>   I want to incorporate middle voice into my conlang, but seeing as
> I'm an L1 English speaker, it's hard for me to see it. ...
> [snip]
>   Any additional info or description of the middle voice, to help me
> clarify, is great. ...
> [snip]
  (In my previous post I had forgotten about the term "diathesis".
Thanks to Ray Brown for reminding me -- he's the one who taught it to me
in the first place.
Everywhere I said "semantic voice", read "diathesis"; wherever I said "semantic middle
voice", read "middle diathesis".
On the other hand, everywhere I said "grammatical voice" or "grammatical middle
voice" or "morphosyntactic voice" or "morphosyntactic middle voice", read it
as-is.)
 I said in my previous post that "middle voice" was part of the morophosyntax,
mostly, of languages with a "Basic Voice System" rather than a "Derived Voice
System" or a "Pragmatic Voice System" or a "Hierarchical Voice System". That
notion came from M. H. Klaiman's "Grammatical Voice".
 These "super-types" of voice systems aren't absolutely pure. The major
languages he uses as examples of Basic Voice Systems, do have "derived voices"
as well -- it's just that the "basic" voices are more "dominant" than the
"derived" ones.
 His examples included languages that were accusative, languages that were
ergative, and languages that had "split" alignment systems.
  Concentrating for the moment just on the accusative languges with a basic voice system:
In these languages, nearly every bivalent verb had a "home voice" (that verb's
"basic" voice). For almost all of these bivalent verbs, that "home voice" was
either Active or Middle -- almost no verb (in most languages, no verb at all)
was at "home" in the Passive* voice. But on the other hand, nearly every verb
could be "coerced", morphologically, into the Passive* voice -- there were
usually a very small minority of verbs which could not be caste into the
Passive.
As for the other bivalent verbs; many verbs at home in the Active could be
coerced into the Passive, but not into the Middle; whereas many other verbs at
home in the Active could be coerced into both the Middle and the Passive.
Likewise, many verbs at home in the Middle could be coerced into the Passive,
but not into the Active; whereas many other verbs at home in the Middle could
be coerced into both the Active and the Passive.
 *For most languages, coercing a verb into the Passive is a valency-reducing
operation; a verb, bivalent before passivization, becomes univalent as a result
of passivization. For these languages, therefore, it makes no sense to speak of
a bivalent verb being at home in the passive voice.
  If we look at the ergative languages with basic voice systems, what we get is this;
Most bivalent verbs would be at home in either the "Active" (what else would I call
it? Maybe there's a better name someone else knows -- but I seem to recall
"active" is what it is called) or the Middle voice. Also, most of them can be
"coerced" or cast into the Antipassive -- whereby the erstwhile absolutive
argument is demoted to an oblique (such as an instrumental) or omitted
altogether, while the erstwhile ergative argument is promoted to absolutive;
note that that is a valency-reducing operation. Furthermore, many "basically
active" verbs can be coerced into the middle voice, while many can't; and many
"basically middle" verbs can be coerced into the active voice, while many
can't.

  -----

 Thomes E. Payne in "Describing Morphosyntax"(1997) says Joan Bybee in
"Morphology"(1985) says that valence-adjusting and voice are the most common
morphology marked on verbs. 84% of languages have derivations marking valency
or voice, and another 6% have inflections marking valency or voice, so 90% of
languages mark their verbs with valency or voice somehow. Aspect is second at
74%, and mood, mode, and modality is third at 68%. (I have not had a chance to
read Bybee's work yet, so I do not know whether she includes retrospective
("perfect") and prospective as aspects, which is traditional, or as moods or
modes or modalities, which I believe is correct; nor whether she includes
evidentials and miratives and mediatives among the moods and modes and
modalities. That could reverse the order of Aspect and Mood, or maybe not.)
Tense is only seventh, at 50%. However AMT (usually written TAM) is usually
inflectional rather than derivational, while voice and valency are usually
 derivational rather than inflectional, so TAM dominate inflection of verbs,
even though voice and valency dominate morphology of verbs overall.

  -----

 Some languages have some verbs which have both a bivalent, "transitive" sense,
and a univalent, "intransitive" sense. In some of these languages, some such
verbs are what are called "labile" verbs.

 In an accusative language, such as English, the subject of an intransitive
verb usually aligns with the agent of a transitive verb.
  Thus, because "eat" is not a labile verb, "I" am the agent of both of the following sentences:
  "I ate a sandwich" (transitive)
  "I ate" (intransitive)

 However, "break" is a labile verb; in its intransitive "incarnation", its
subject is its patient, not its agent.
  "The stupid mover broke my vase." (transitive)
  "My vase broke." (intransitive)

  According to Payne, English's intransitive uses of labile verbs are in the middle diathesis.

  -----

 The semantic roles of Agent and Patient have to do with Control and
Affectedness. The Agent is the one that has Control, and the Patient is the one
that is Affected. But in many necessarily two-participant clauses, the
participant with the most control is also the one that is most affected; and
neither participant has complete control.
 Verbs of emotion (or judgement or ... etc) and verbs of perception are the two
main kinds of verbs like this.
 Take "fear". "I fear the Greeks". How does that affect the Greeks? It doesn't.
They probably don't even know. Do they have any control over it? Probably not a
bit. Do I? probably not a whole lot. Who is most affected? Me. Who is most
conscious of it? Me. So, I am the most agent-like (conscious), but I am also
the most patient-like (affected).
 Similarly for "love". "I love my daughter". How does that affect her? Only
indirectly. Does she know? Only indirectly. Does it affect me? Yes. Do I have
control over the fact of my love? Yes. Do I have control over the outcome of my
love? Yes. So I am completely the agent, and much more directly the patient
than she is -- she is only indirectly a patient.
 What about "see"? "I see that Chafe and Nichols's book on Evidentiality is
red." How much and what kind of control do I have over this? I have agenda
control, but not outcome control -- that is, I can choose whether or not to
look at the book, but, having done so, cannot choose what color to see it as.
My agenda control is both conscious and voluntary. The book has outcome control
but not agenda control -- whether or not it gets looked at is beyond its
control, but if it gets looked at, its going to be red. Its outcome control is
completely involuntary, and unconscious. Is it in anyway affected by being
seen? No. Am I affected by seeing it? Yes. So I am a bit more agentive than it
is, and also a bit more patientive than it is.

 Verbs of Emotion are sometimes said to have Experiencer/Target roles instead
of Agent/Patient roles.
 Verbs of Perception are sometimes said to have Perceiver/Stimulus roles
instead of Agent/Patient roles.
 Some natlangs, according to Blake's "Case", distinguish Agents from
Experiencers from Perceivers (from some fourth thing I've forgotten).

  -----

 Voice systems and Case systems are often discussed together or one after the
other. Some of the same semantics that can be expressed by one can be expressed
by the other. In particular the distinctions of control and affectedness I just
discussed can be expressed either by "Middle Voice" or by a case.

 Blake says that, cross-linguistically, the case that ought to be called
"dative" should be the one used for "targets or focuses of activities which do
not affect them". Examples are not only verbs of perception and emotion, but
also verbs such as "seek" and "find". If "I seek a copy of Joan Bybee's
Morphology", and then "I find a copy of Joan Bybee's Morphology", the book is
relatively unaffected by this activity.

 The dative is the most common "adverbal" case after the nominative/absolutive
and the accusative or ergative as the "case" may be; it is the most common
after the two (or three, if the language is tripartite) of them and the
genitive.

 Note that in many languages, in verbs of emotion and perception and judgment,
and even in verbs such as "seek" and "find", either the Experiencer or the
Stimulus gets put in the Dative instead of the ---
  Nominative (Experiencer, Accusative language)
  Ergative (Experiencer, Ergative or Tripartite or Split Language)
  Accusative (Stimulus, Accusative or Tripirtite or Split Language)
  Absolutive (Stimulus, Ergative Language)

  In some languages, these verbs would be put in the Middle Voice.

  -----

  Tom H.C. in MI




		
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