Re: English usuage question

En réponse à Andreas Johansson <and_yo@...>:

> 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?
>
Well, in that particular case I don't think it's really possible, but quite a
few verbs in English can indeed behave this way. Examples:
- I am cooking the rice - The rice is cooking,
- Let's dry it - It dries quickly.

I've seen it called "unmarked passive", but it's more exactly a middle voice
(Maggel has it, along with a reflexive, a reciprocal, a few applicatives, but
no passive! :)) ).

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

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