Re: Test for middle voice?

Henrik Theiling wrote:
>> Roger Mills writes:
> >...
> > 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.
There can't be an agent with an inchoative, since they represent processes,
events or changes in state that involve only the patient. I suspect that
could be a universal :-).  OTOH a causative, to my view, implies an agent,
most likely animate though some languages would allow an instrument in some
cases.  The agent can be omitted if it's unnecessary information, or has
been established by context-- in such cases the patient is promoted to
subject and the sentence becomes passive (or is it anti-passive-- I've never
been too clear on that).

 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,
Neither does Kash, though there are ways to translate an Engl. passive, or
translate certain Kash "active" constructions to an Engl. passive-- in both
cases for stylistic reasons. It always struck me as interesting that Span,
Fr. and Ital. definitely disfavor the passive construction (ser/etre/essere
+ participle) in ordinary speech.

> >...
> > 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 ...
Yes IMO

or is it synonymous with 'the
> glass is filled with water'/'the glass is full of water', a state?
Not synonymous; but these two, in at least one reading, are equivalent. They
both state a result. For instance, upon entering a dining room, you might
exclaim: Look, the glasses are filled with water! (the assumption is,
somebody did it), or equally well: Look, the glasses are full of water
(merely commenting on the state). Note that even if you saw a waiter going
around filling glasses, you could not say, Look, the glasses are filling
[with water].

Am I making any sense? Not sure..............

> For the event, Qthyn|gai would use
>
>    full-become glass-PAT water-INSTR
>    'the glass fills using water/by means of water'
Comparable to the Kash.

In Chafe's formulation, which originally inspired the Kash system (even
though Chafe is somewhat outdated), causative verbs derived from statives
are actually a combination of causative plus inchoative:

(State) full -- (Inch.) intr. fill=become full -- (Caus.) trans. fill=cause
X to become full

Causative derivations of actions and experientials (both trans. and intr.)
seem to work differently....