Re: CHAT: Linux etc. was(Re: Zelandish (was: 2nd pers. pron. for God))

Roberto Suarez Soto writes:
 >
 >         Times are a'changing, they say :-) BTW (and to save the
 > offtopic), that "a+<verb in gerund>" thing that I've seen many times in
 > english is something that I don't understand :-m Where does it come
 > from?

Well, on 2002-08-13,  Wesley Parish wrote:
 >
 >On Tue, 13 Aug 2002 03:05, bnathyuw wrote:
 >>  --- julien eychenne <eychenne.j@...> wrote: >
 >>
 ><snip>
 >> > Do you mean we can say 'the bed sleeps two' for
 >> > example ?
 >>
 >> yep. one of my favourite things about the english
 >> language is its tendency to get active and passive
 >> muddled up ( and also the use of the passive with the
 >> active's indirect/prepositional object as subject : 'i
 >> was given a book', 'i could tell i was being talked
 >> about', 'she always liked being looked up to' &c. )
 >
 >But that's one of the beauties of the whole shebang.  Mind you, you can say -
 >and be understood - "the house was abuilding" for "the house was being
 >built".  That used to be the standard way of indicating passive voice.  It
 >just seems that English is somewhat uncomfortable with the passive voice
 >without a medial voice, so uses the current passive forms to indicate a form
 >of medio-passive voice.

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