Re: English usuage question

I would have said "the power is turned off by pressing the button."
Actually, I probably would have said something completely different
like "pressing the button turns off the power" or "to turn off the
power, press the button."

Trust your instincts on this one Andreas. :)

Cheers,
Eamon

Andreas Johansson wrote:
>
> I recently found on a piece of electronic stuff the instruction "The power
> turns off by pressing the button". I thought this was an odd way of putting
> it, and said so. But a there-present girl, who like me isn't a L1 speaker of
> English, insisted it was a perfectly normal expression. I still it's
> somewhere on the line between weirdness and ergativity. So, what does the
> Native Speakers (tm) on the list think?
>
>                                                    Andreas
>
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