Thanks, Bill. That's very helpful.
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From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Spruiell, William C <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, March 16, 2015 12:06 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: middle passive
Craig, Bob, et al.:
I know ergative analyses have been applied to English by other theories than SFL, but I couldn't remember details so I did some checking ('ergative' itself has been around at least since 1943, according to the OED). Halliday used an ergative analysis in part 3 of his "Notes on transitivity and theme in English" in Journal of Linguistics in 1968 (that doesn't mean no one used it earlier, including potentially Halliday, it just means that it's at least that old). Keyser and Roeper, however, seem to have independently done so as well in 1984 in a Linguistic Inquiry article titled "On the middle and ergative constructions in English" ('independently' because they state they're adapting an idea from a 1981 dissertation on Italian, and they nowhere mention Halliday's prior application of the term to English). So, there are at least two different "strands" of this idea floating around.
--- Bill Spruiell
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From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Hancock, Craig G [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Sunday, March 15, 2015 8:26 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: middle passive
Bob,
My apologies if I was unclear. The point I tried to express was that Richard's Australian source probably drew from Systemic Functional Linguistics, which uses "ergative" to talk about what others call "middle voice" in English. Halliday treats it fairly extensively, so it seemed worth pointing out for anyone interested in reading more. It would be interesting to explore ways in which English has this in common with other languages. That issue came up last time I mentioned it on list, with at least one person voicing skepticism about whether his use of the term is mainstream. Do you know of anyone else who applies it to English? I have never followed that up.
C
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From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Bob Yates <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, March 15, 2015 5:57 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: middle passive
Craig,
The label “ergative” for these verbs has been around a longtime and I confident it is not drawn from SFL. Look up what an ergative language is.
Bob Yates
University of Central Missouri
From: Hancock, Craig G<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, March 15, 2015 2:50 PM
To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Beth,
Nice summary.
I think it was Richard who mentioned "ergative" for an Australian source. They were probably drawing from Systemic Functional Grammar, which has a large presence in Australia. In the third edition of An Introduction to Functional Grammar (Halliday and Mathiesson 2004--I don't own the fourth edition yet), it is covered on pages 284 to roughly 300 in the chapter on clause as Representation. Halliday makes the case that the distinction (ergative or non-ergative) is a choice within the grammar. "Either the process is recognized as self engendering, in which case there is no separate agent; or it is represented as engendered from outside, in which case there is another participant functioning as agent" (290). I guess the argument would be that a user of the language has the option of representing an event in two different ways by selecting from these syntactic options. "I cooked the rice for two hours." "The rice cooked for two hours."The one indispensable entity is the rice, which he labels as "medium."
Like the Cambridge grammar, Halliday says that ergative patterns are expanding within the language.
Once you establish, for example, that an earthquake has hit the town, you can say things like "windows shattered, goods spilled off of shelves, water mains broke, cracks opened up in highways...." Since agency is already established, you can maintain attention on results without having to remind the readers that these entities are not the agents of their own change. "The football sailed through the goal posts and on into history." I suspect this "middle voice" is expanding precisely because of the utility of these forms.
I usually bring it up in a grammar class when I teach transitivity, but it's so hard to cover even the rough outlines of a grammar in a single semester.Anyone taking a grammar class needs exposure to traditional views of transitivity, and then there's not much room for other perspectives.
Craig
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From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Beth Young <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, March 15, 2015 2:44 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: middle passive
Middle voice is what you get when the verb is inflected like an active verb, but the meaning of the verb is something done to the subject, e.g., I broke the glass vs the glass broke.
When the glass breaks, the implication is that someone did the breaking to the glass, but the verb "breaks" is inflected as though the glass is breaking by itself. In the passive voice, we'd conjugate the verb differently: "The glass was broken." Also, normally with passive, you can add a "by" phrase (the glass was broken by the little girl) but you can't say "The glass broke by a little girl." And sometimes the meaning differs from the passive, e.g., "The passage reads well" says something about the passage, but "She reads the passage well" says something about her reading skill.
Per the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, the category of "middle voice" has more to do with semantics than with syntax.
I don't think I've ever addressed this concept in my classes, though it has come up in conversation with individual students on occasion.
Beth
Dr. Beth Rapp Young
Associate Professor, English
[log in to unmask]
University of Central Florida
"Reach for the Stars"
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From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Jan Kammert [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Sunday, March 15, 2015 2:03 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: middle passive
My apologies ...
I think I just sent a blank message to the list.
Is anyone willing to explain middle passive to a middle school teacher? I wonder if it's something I see in my students' writing.
Thanks!
Jan
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From: "Prof. Richard Grant WAU" <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Sunday, March 15, 2015 7:30:04 AM
Subject: Re: ATEG Digest - 9 Mar 2015 to 10 Mar 2015 (#2015-19)
This morning I discovered a study on the middle voice/middle passive. The researcher presents data showing a decline in the use of passive and a significant increase in the spread and use of the middle passive.
Here’s the title: Hundt, Marianne. English Mediopassive Constructions : A Cognitive, Corpus-based Study of Their Origin, Spread, and Current Status. 2007
Richard
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