Middle voice

Anonymous"These clothes wash well."

"VW Polos sell quickly."

Would you say that those are examples of the middle voice?

They are indeed example of the middle construction or medio-passive. Are you studying that voice or something. It's not easy to grasp, is it?

yes. but not because the clothes in this sentence are simutaneously the subject and objet of the verb wash. only because the phenomenon of getting washed well can be said to apply to them independently of who or what the agent may be. this use was a key function of the 'pregrammatical' middle voice in all Indo European languages. to know why the first greek grammarians insisted on administering th

Anonymousyes. but not because the clothes in this sentence are simutaneously the subject and objet of the verb wash. only because the phenomenon of getting washed well can be said to apply to them independently of who or what the agent may be. Fionn C. Bennett <removed mod>

So the clothes are attributed with a certain independent property?

0A logical enough question. But that's the problem, it's too logical. Or, rather, the logic immanent in the question is inappropriate for understanding why many languages are equipped with a 'vestigal' middle voice. One can see what I mean if we consider what is meant by 'property'. In the guise of the term 'attribute', this is normally opposed to substance or substrate. The chap who introduced

0 What does "pre-grammatical" mean please? 0-

0 Thanks, Anon. Fascinating stuff. 0-

0As concerns the middle voice, it's simply all the uses of voice in which the subject of the verb was considered the passion of an agentivity intrinsic to itself that one could not identify. It is therefore quite distinct from and not reducible to "normal" reflexive and reciprocal forms and was not considered "defective" because it resisted analysis in these terms. Verbs and inflections expressi

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01cite10Anonymous12cite10Might I ask who "Forbes" is? Why is he/she interested in something as recondite as the middle voice? 12br
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10Just for the record I did not raise the question about the middle voice, but was puzzled by the word "pre-grammatical" which suggests that there was a t

0<They must never express a self-affectedness attibutable to its substrate, which is precisely what the pre-grammatical middle existed to express>02br
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00Purely out of interest, Anon, what do you base this statement on?02br
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00MrP0-

0 01blockquote

01cite10Anonymous12cite10Might I ask who "Forbes" is? Why is he/she interested in something as recondite as the middle voice? 12br
12br
12blockquote

10Is the middle voice really so recondite? This is a linguistics forum after all. 0-