Re: Stative passive

En réponse à Carsten Becker :


>A second question: In German, we've got a "Vorgangspassiv"
>(actional/active?! passive) and a "Zustandspassiv" (stative passive). That's
>the difference between "The door is closed" (done by somebody) and "The door
>is closed" (state of being).
I seem to remember (I've never had classes of German, and my attempt at 
learning it on my own stopped ten years ago, so I am very probably wrong) 
that in German this "Vorgangspassiv" is formed with "worden" + past 
participle, while the "Zustandspassiv" is formed with "sein" + past 
participle. Am I correct? I do remember at least something similar to that 
which at the time baffled me.

>  Is it really necessary to think about this in
>conlanging or is one passive enough to express both.
French and English do very well with one passive only, so it's not 
necessary. But IIRC Hebrew also has two passives, in the same way an 
"active" passive with possibility to indicate the agent, and a "stative" 
passive which prevents the presence of an agent, in the same way as you 
explained. In other words, if you want a conlang to make such a 
distinction, you may do it. But it is no more necessary than number, gender 
or case distinctions are :))) .

>And what about "The soup cooks"? It does not cook itself, and it is not
>cooked by anyone, it just cooks.
Actually, it is *always* cooked by someone. It's just that such a 
construction prevents you from saying who does it.

>  Because I'm working on a trigger language
>at the moment (oh wonder! but hey, it was me who started the
>trigger-language-boom again, actually!): There wouldn't be an agent here,
>right? There is no cook, or is "the soup" the agent and a patient is
>missing?
Rather, "soup" is here a patient and the agent is missing. "The soup cooks" 
and "the soup is being cooked" are quasi-synonyms as far as the soup is 
concerned ( :)) ), except that the first construction doesn't allow you to 
specify an agent, while the second one allows it (I won't enter in the 
subtitle differences of aspect in those two sentences. They are irrelevant 
for the problem here). This kind of English constructions has been 
extensively discussed on the list (look in the archives for "middle voice" 
or "mediopassive", you will probably find a lot about this strange 
behaviour of English verbs :)) ).

Christophe Grandsire.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang.