Re: grammatical cases & semantic roles (was: ergative/accusative)

On Jan 29, 2007, at 3:51 PM, Mark J. Reed wrote:

> On 1/29/07, MorphemeAddict@wmconnect.com
> <MorphemeAddict@...>
>>
>> In English cases similar to this RAM has mentioned verbs that are
>> inherently
>> anti-passive (e.g., "shout").  I believe he would say that these
>> verbs are
>> inherently middle-voice.
>
>
>
> That doesn't answer the question.  If "all verbs have a patient",
> then it
> doesn't matter how you choose to categorize the verbs;  where is
> the patient
> in those sentences?  If it's implied, then *what* is it?
I can't come up with references offhand, but I've read that someone
has analyzed them as having something like "the situation at hand" as
the subject.