Re: Medio-passive (was: A Survey)

At 08:17 PM 10/3/03 -0400, you wrote:
>Christophe Grandsire scripsit:
>
> > >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?").
>
>In German, however, it would default to the person's hands, and "I wash
>my hands" would seem over-specific.  Still worse, "I put my hands in my
>pockets", which is only felicitous if you are in the habit of putting your
>hands in someone else's pockets or someone else's hands in your pockets.
Danish acts the same as German in these situation.  I wouldn't be likely to
say in Danish that I was washing "my" hands unless there were some question
as to whether I were washing my own hands or someone elses.  "I am washing
the hands" automatically means "I am washing my hands."  I can't quite get
the phrase right in my head in Danish at the moment, but I am fairly
certain that the correct way to say "I put my hands in my pockets" is "I
put the hands in the pockets."  Everyone will know that both the hands and
the pockets belong to you.  In general, Danish uses "the x" for "my body part."

Isidora