Re: Test for middle voice?

Aidan Grey wrote:
> Heya folks,
>
> 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. I know that "Water fills
> the cup" is a middle voice
Well water does not fill the cup in the same way that "I" fill the cup
in the active "I fill the cup with water". One could also say "The cup
is filled with water". The reason the voice was called 'middle' is that
it sort of come between active and passive.

(at least, it is according to Rick Morneau's
> 'Lexical Semantics'), but I have no idea how tell when another verb is,
> or should be. Can anyone help me with a simple test?
It really depends on what you mean by "middle". In the strict sense,
English does not have a middle _voice_, i.e. a grammatically category
distinguished morphologically from active and passive. What Rick Morneau
is talking about is _diathesis_, namely the relation between the
semantic roles subcategorized for a lexical verb or predicate, and the
expression of those roles as grammatical relations. As diathesis.
linguists do not seem to me to be entirely in agreement about what
constitutes 'middle'.

Now you are obviously talking about a middle _voice_ such as existed (in
part) in ancient Greek. Basically it was 'reflexive' in its meaning in
the broadest sense of the term. The middle voice of ancient Greek behave
very much like the reflexive verbs of modern Romance languages. They
could be directly reflexive (je me lave) or indirectly reflexive (je me
lave les mains), or just idiomatic. They sometimes did duty for
passives, just as the do in the Romance langs.

If you are designing a loglang, then you will probably need to read up
about diathesis, semantic roles v. grammatical roles, and decide which
precise meaning you give 'middle'. But if, as I suspect, you are
designing an artlang, then my advice would be to model your middle voice
on the behavior of reflexive verbs in languages like French, Spanish or
Italian and not worry about 'tests'.

Hope this helps.

--
Ray
==================================
ray@carolandray.plus.com
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
MAKE POVERTY HISTORY

Replies