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Re: Test for middle voice?

From:Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>
Date:Monday, November 21, 2005, 3:11
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

Replies

Scotto Hlad <scott.hlad@...>
Roger Mills <rfmilly@...>