Re: Test for middle voice?

The best example for middle voice I ever saw was, "The door opened."

-----Original Message-----
From: Constructed Languages List [mailto:CONLANG@listserv.brown.edu]On
Behalf Of Henrik Theiling
Sent: Sun, November 20, 2005 8:11 PM
To: CONLANG@listserv.brown.edu
Subject: Re: Test for middle voice?


Hi!

Roger Mills writes:
>...
> It has struck me, in the course of this thread, that Kash _inchoative_
forms
> often fulfill the requirements of middle voice--
>
> Stative: londo 'full'-- inch. çulondo 'fill (intr.), getting/becoming
> full -- caus. rundondo (trans.) to fill s.t.
Funny, by having a three-fold system, it is totally different to the
two-fold system of Qthyn|gai: the difference between inchoative and
causative is by an agent being marked present or missing.  The
language has a log of valence infixes to do this.  What I found funny
about the Qthyn|gai system was that it has no passive voice in the
sence English has it, while it directly has middle voice and it can
even express the lack of a semantical patient in the same way as for
the agent.

>...
> The only thing that becomes difficult is: "Water filled the glass", which
I
> suspect would have to use the inchoative, with a prepositional phrase
yambit
> sawu 'by means of water' or liri sawu 'with respect to water'; generally
> inanimates can't be subj. of causative vbs.
Is 'water filled the glass' an event or is it synonymous with 'the
glass is filled with water'/'the glass is full of water', a state?
For the event, Qthyn|gai would use

   full-become glass-PAT water-INSTR
   'the glass fills using water/by means of water'

For the state, I'd have to think and look at the available cases
again.  Maybe it'd use a serial verb construction:

   full glass-PAT contain-APP_LOC water-PAT
   'the glass is full water is contained (in it)'

(Or similar, I'd have to check the exact valencies etc.  Qthyn|gai is
quite hard to translate into for me.)

**Henrik