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From: alderson@netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Subject: Ergativity and Middle voice (was Re: English verb tenses)
In-Reply-To: Paul Sampson's message of 21 Mar 1995 16:19:54 GMT
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Date: Thu, 23 Mar 1995 22:36:08 GMT
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In article <3kmuba$q36@marble.Britain.EU.net> Paul Sampson
<paul.sampson@octacon.co.uk> writes:

>This is possibly flying off at a tangent (but then the original remark which
>started this thread off was too) but all this talk of reflexive patterns
>prompts me to ask 'what is the difference in structure between a sentence
>containing a noun in the ergative case and a corresponding sentence (i.e.
>effectively the same meaning) containing a verb in the middle voice (of which
>'reflexive') is but one subtype'? I mean aren't they just two 'rival'
>explanations for the same phenomenon?

I don't think so.

Middle voice (equivalent, for the most part, to reflexivity) implies action of
the verb on the subject of the sentence, agentive or not.

Ergative morphology entails a difference of marking on the agent of transitive
verbs (which in the pure instance differs from all other nominal markings),
without any implication of the verb acting on the agent (i. e., without any
reflexive reading).

Modern Georgian, by the way, is not syntactically ergative, although the aorist
system marks the patient nominatively.  The pattern of marking is

			Agent	Patient
	Present system:	 Nom.	 Dative
	Aorist system:	 Erg.	 Nom.
	Perfect system:	 Dat.	 Nom.

(Third label may be incorrect, but the Agent is certainly marked as dative.)
The conclusion is that Modern Georgian is syntactically accusative.

>And are there any modern languages which still use a middle voice (other than
>reflexive)? I believe there may be one in Ethiopia, but I've forgotten its
>name.

I believe that modern Greek still has mediopassive voice opposed to the active.
Since my Greek is of the pre-Hellenistic variety, we'll have to ask for confir-
mation from others.
-- 
Rich Alderson		[Tolkien quote temporarily removed in favour of
alderson@netcom.com	 proselytizing comment below --rma]

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