Re: Existential voice

Thanks for the comments, Ray.

As for my joke about why not me or the dog raining, I was just pointing
out an oddity of idiomatic English that has always amused/annoyed me ;-b

I am trying to grammaticalize a verb form with no participant roles. As
I'm refining the rules for creating the active and passive voices, I found
that I needed some kind of regularity in how to express a situation such
as "it is raining." My current grammar requires a "before phrase" for
active and passive verbs, and I want to avoid using a dummy subject; that
means coming up with a voice that is neither active nor passive and thus
does not require a "before phrase." (In Glörsa, the "before phrase" --
kizakinwes [kIzA'kInh\Es] -- would be the subject of an active voice verb
and the object of a passive voice verb.)

It sounds like I'm on the right path, even if it is a bit unbeaten.

Gregory Gadow