Re: very confused - syntax question

Raymond A. Brown wrote:


> 'middle voice' traditionally implies a directly or indirectly reflexive
> meaning of the verb; indeed, the old Greek 'middle verbs' are very much
> like the reflexive verbs of the modern Romancelangs in their behavior.
> Such verbs may or may not themselves be transitive.
Then I have been getting "middle-voice" mixed up with the
"medio-passive"
in my descriptions of it in Teonaht.  Middle Voice shows that an agent
is acting upon itself:  I wash, je me lave, at least this is how Trask
defines
it (in keeping with the use of reflexive verbs in the Romance
languages).
The mediopassive seems to be where you use a subject that would
ordinarily
be the object of its transitive verb:  the soup cooks (rather than one
cooks
the soup, or the soup is being cooked).  I don't know; maybe these terms
are interchangeable.  Soup is acting on itself.  Soup cooks (itself).
But
I see a slight difference in these examples.  I wonder how Jennifer is
using middle voice.  "with my brothers they won the prize for
themselves?"
or: "with my brothers the prize wins for them"?   I was wrong to cast it
as I did in my last example in the passive voice.  I have it firmly in
my head, for some reason, that your resumptive pronoun "they" had to
echo the case of "with my brothers," Jennifer.  Better:

... with my two brothers that the prize won (itself) for them...

which is why you are wondering whether "won" should be singular or
plural.  Am I all washed up? <G>

> >ta rusa-k@-mi siu na a-kanyase ko kanyan-al-ena inya kah
> >with brother-pl-my two that the-prize TOP.past won-middle-they.resumptive
> >they.resumptive BEN
> >with my two brothers who won the prize
What is the case of -ena?  What is the double "they resumptive" doing?
What is inya kah?

>
> "the-prize" is the topic of the relative clause only if we know we're
> talking about the prize.  If 'kanyan' is 'middle voice' (as opposed to
> active or passive) if would mean that your brothers won the prize for
> themselves - which is quite reasonable; but the verb is still transitive.
> In English whether we say "They won the prize" or "The prize was won", the
> verb remains transitive.  Indeed, in English only transitive verbs can be
> used passively (this is not so in all languages; Latin, e.g. can use
> intransitive verbs passively, e.g. 'itur' = "on va", 'one goes, they go,
> you go etc')
I like that!  Intransitive passives:  we go, we are goed.  (Not to be
mistaken for "we are gone"!).  The clock ticks, it is ticked.
>
> >Should "kanyan" be inflected for third person plural?
>
> If it is really middle voice then it must be 3rd pers. plural - unless you
> do as some languages do and have only an invariant form used when the
> relative pronoun is the subject; but I think that is not what you wish.
Or unless you mean "won" to have as its subject "prize" and not
"brothers."
?????
Sally