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Re: Medio-passive (was: A Survey)

From:Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>
Date:Friday, October 3, 2003, 23:54
En réponse à Ray Brown :


>tas kheiras louo: (active) would mean that I was washing the hands of >someone else or of something else (e.g. a statue). It would make sense >only if the hands had already been identified. If not, the sentence would >be incomplete - we would want to know whose hands they were. > >Whether or not "je lave les mains" would have the same response in French >I leave to Christophe to comment.
It would. Such a sentence would trigger the question "les mains de qui ?" ("whose hands?"). Moreover, as it is, it gives me the impression that the hands the person is washing are independent and don't belong to anyone. You just are obliged to precise whose hands it is, or the sentence gives the idea that you're washing hands that have been cut away from a body ;))) . Christophe Grandsire. http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang.

Replies

John Cowan <cowan@...>
Isidora Zamora <isidora@...>