Re: preferred voices?

On Sat, Sep 23, 2000 at 11:52:48PM +0200, Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
[snip]
> Same in my lang (Nur-ellen).  I also came to the conclusion that passive
> doesn't make sense in it.  A passive would move the object into the
> subject
> position, but by the logic of active case marking it would have to be
> put
> in the objective rather than the agentive case, which would mean no
> change
> of the case.
When I started thinking about my conlang, I wanted to mark noun cases
semantically. Although I didn't know it at the time, this excluded passive
sentences, because, like you said, the semantic function of the noun
doesn't change when you put the sentence into the passive.

[snip]
> Very true.  The passive voice is a hallmark of bureaucrat-ese,
LOL!!! Ever seen this before:

        http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/career/index.html

Talk about language abuse! :-P

> and all too often it is used euphemistically, with a sentence like
> the one quoted above used where "We have caused the death of two
> employees,
> and no-one bothers investigating the matter" would be in better accord
> with the truth.  Elves tend to look upon such language abuse with
> disgust,
> and see the lack of a passive voice in their language as a virtue rather
> than a defect.
[snip]

Hmm. Your example here wouldn't quite work in my conlang, because in my
conlang, *any* of the verb arguments can be dropped at will. For example:
1)      pii'z3d0 Kyy'kh mangu'.
        man      harm   horse
        (org)    (verb) (rcp)
        "The man harms the horse." (Same as "The horse was harmed by the
        man".)

2)      Kyy'kh mangu'.
        harm   horse
        (verb) (rcp)
        "The horse was harmed." (Or, "[Something] harms the horse."

3)      pii'z3d0 Kyy'kh.
        man      harm
        "The man harms [something]."

So, bureaucratic language abuse can still happen just by conveniently
dropping out words. (Though I don't plan to change this, because I think
this flexibility makes my conlang more expressive.)


T