Re: Ergativity

--- michael poxon <m.poxon@...> wrote:
> Yes, this is the way it works in Omeina too,
> and 'Soup cooks' would be
> simply surreal, as it would imply that the soup
> was cooking something!
It doesn't seem at all strange to me. That's the
thing about the English middle voice: it's
identical to the active, so you can't tell just
by looking.

Anyway, things like "our soup cooks very nicely
in a dutch oven" and similar don't seem at all
unnatural.

> You'd
> have to say "(somebody - Robert, the chef, etc)
> - is cooking the soup".
You can, and it means something different!

> But then again, English is quite fond of
turning
> essentially passive
> constructions "The soup is being cooked" into
> non-passive ones like "The
> soup is cooking", isn't it?
Yep.

Padraic.


=====
la cieurgeourea provoer mal trasfu ast meiyoer ke la cieurgeourea andrext ben trasfu.

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who'd had it, he just couldn't hack it;
   he stood with care
   on a cane backed chair,
and impaled himself on a rackett.

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