Post by Paulo TibúrcioPost by Simon PughI've encountered the middle voice several times now while reading the
Aeneid.
[...]
Post by Simon PughIs there more to be said about it? I understand Greek has a middle
voice, but I do not know any Greek.
In Portuguese, when we deal with the concept of verbal voice, we recognize
1 Active: The subject is the agent, as in "The dog bit the man." 2
Passive: The subject is the patient, as in "The dog was bitten by
the man."
3 Reflexive: The subject is both the agent and the patient, as in
"The dog bit itself."
4 Middle: The subject is also the beneficiary of the action, as in
"When I grow out of kindergarten, I'll find me a wife."
In greek, the phrase "I'll find me" would typically be represented by a
single inflectional form, a feature which makes the concept clearer. In
latin they went just so far as to the point of having distinct
inflectional forms typical of active and passive.
A decent graph I saw for the four voices you describe above is as follows:
Two-participant Reflexive Middle
One-Participant
+ <---- degree of distinguishability of
participants -----> -
One-form ( Transitive ) ( RM )
( Intransitive )
Two-form ( Transitive ) ( RM ) ( MM ) (
Intransitive )
Non-MM ( Transitive ) ( RM ) (
sitive )
where RM = reflexive marker on verb forms, MM = middle voice marker on verb
forms, one-form = languages that encode reflexive and middle with one
marker, two form = languages that have separate markers for each.
By this view, both reflexive and middle refer to one entity (which is both
the actor and undergoer), but while the reflexive encodes the actor and
undergoer as two participants (which are the same entity), the middle merges
the actor and undergoer; they are generally less distinguishable.
On a more informal note, I like thinking of middle voice as what you have
when you try to translate into English, and you can't figure out whether to
use reflexive, impersonals, passives or what. :-)
Estonian also has middle-voice verbs, although they are not exactly
inflectional (although much of the language is). Rather, the markers are
derivational affixes, so "riietama" is a transitive meaning "to dress",
while "riietuma" is an intransitive meaning "to get dressed". But the second
form is not a pure reflexive, because the actual reflexive would be "ennast
riietama" (to dress oneself), so I could express "I dress myself" as
"riietan ennast" (reflexive), or "riietun" as the middle. Similarly "I
dressed the child" as "riietasin last" (pure transitive)or "The child will
dress itself" as "Laps riietab ennast" (reflexive), but "the child gets
dressed (by itself)" as "Laps riietub".
Also, something like "riietuma" is almost like a Latin anti-deponent: it is
active in form (if one ignores the derivational affix change), but passive
in meaning. Hence, while I can passivate forms of "riietama", e.g "mind
riietakse" (I am being dressed), I cannot passivate forms of the Estonian
middle-voice-like verbs, because they already carry a passive-like meaning.
Post by Paulo TibúrcioOf course, although the "original" meaning of the voices should be roughly
as above, meaning and form don't always behave so consistently. Take, for
instance, "The dog died.": although the form is active, the meaning is
neither active nor passive (in the sense of being the patient of someone
else's action); neither can one say it is reflexive (as the dog couldn't
die someone else) or middle voiced (as it is not meant that the dog died
for his own benefit).
"Benefit" would probably not be the word I'd associate with middle voice
verbs. Rather, I'd think of it as "having an effect" on the doer. In which
case, semantically, "die" may be one of the most unquestionable middle-voice
verbs one can think of! :-)
Post by Paulo TibúrcioAll in all, voice use depends on the word in question with its associated
meaning, i.e., a given word in a specific sense will be associated with a
morphological representation of a given voice in some typical syntactical
construction - and the allowed relationships must be learnt, not
calculated.
I agree, actual meaning is very important. Take the English verb "sicken"
(to take sick, get sick, become sick, BUT also to make sick, hence both a
transitive and intransitive verb). So I can say "I sicken" (I become sick),
or "I sicken myself" (but not the same meaning as "I sicken"). In fact, the
shade of meaning here is comparable (but not identical) to my chosen
Estonian verbs above, where "riietan ennast" (I dress myself), "mind
riietakse" (I am [being] dressed) and "riietun" (I get dressed [with me
doing the dressing, probably]) all allow the possibility that I end up
dressed because I threw the clothes on myself, but the distinguishability of
who is doing the dressing is emphasized in various degrees.
AHS