In a message dated 8/17/2004 11:10:56 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
butsuri@MYREALBOX.COM writes:
>Errr... You're the linguist here, but that's not what I understand by
>the term "labile verb". I've always understood it as referring
>exclusively to those verbs which may be used transitively or
>intransitively such that the intransitive subject refers to the same
>role as the transitive object; e.g. "I broke the bottle"/"The bottle
>broke". _Describing Morphosyntax_ appears to agree with me (it calls
>them "middle verbs" for obvious reasons). Clearly "eat" is not such a
>verb.
>Are you sure there's an established usage of "labile verb" to cover
>_all_ verbs that can be transitive or intransitive? Maybe someone
>could look it up in Trask?
RMW Dixon (in _Ergativity_) uses "labile" or "ambitransitive" for both types
of verb: the "S=O" ambitransitives like "break", and the "S=A" ambitransitives
like "eat."
Doug