Re: USAGE: 'born'

Hi!

John Cowan <jcowan@...> writes:
> >     John volunteered for the job.
> >     John was volunteered for the job [by his wife].
>
> I can't accept this as a mere rule-governed extension of the ordinary "volunteer",
> any more than I can swallow *"John was died by his wife".  "Mary volunteered
> John for the job" (your transitivized but not yet passivized form)
> is a piece of irony: transitive "volunteer" in fact means "commandeer".
I agree, I don't swallow it either.  In German, it's a common joke to
use exactly these passives to (ungrammatically) coerce an intransitive
to a transitive to add an external force:

  Ach,  er ist gestorben??
  Naja, er wurde gestorben.

  Oh, he died?
  Well, he was died. (= he was killed)

But still, it is wrong.  Maybe in a few years, it is the common way of
using it without joking (at least in German), not not yet.

**Henrik