Pedants' Paradise

[vinteuil]

I think the distinction between active and passive was more fluid in the past, before those Victorians tried to pin it down.

A usage which hasn't spread this side of the border and so does not cause consternation on this thread is the Scots it wants done - though it is found in some varieties of American English. This article recognises its probable Scots origns.

And don't forget Jane Austen's While the boxes were unpacking - continuous forms of the passive were very late arrivals on the grammatical scene.

.... I like the Austen quote. It's almost like a "middle voice", neither active nor passive - didn't the Greeks have a middle voice? - along the lines of "the door opened, and in came Fred" - where "opened" is properly neither active nor passive.

EDIT

... aha! - wiki rides to the rescue -

"Some languages (such as Albanian, Bengali, Fula, Tamil, Sanskrit, Icelandic, Swedish and Ancient Greek) have a middle voice. This is a set of inflections or constructions which is to some extent different from both the active and passive voices. The middle voice is said to be in the middle between the active and the passive voices because the subject often cannot be categorized as either agent or patient but may have elements of both. For example it may express what would be an intransitive verb in English. For example, in The casserole cooked in the oven, cooked is syntactically active but semantically passive. In Classical Greek, the middle voice often has a reflexive sense: the subject acts on or for itself, such as "The boy washes himself", or "The boy washes". It can be transitive or intransitive. It can occasionally be used in a causative sense, such as "The father causes his son to be set free", or "The father ransoms his son".
In English there is no longer a verb form for the middle voice, though some uses may be classified as middle voice, often resolved via a reflexive pronoun, as in "Fred shaved", which may be expanded to "Fred shaved himself" – contrast with active "Fred shaved John" or passive "John was shaved by Fred". This need not be reflexive, as in "my clothes soaked in detergent overnight". English used to have a distinct form, called the passival, which was displaced over the early 19th century by the passive progressive (progressive passive), and is no longer used in English. In the passival, one would say "the house is building", which is today instead "the house is being built"; likewise "the meal is eating", which is now "the meal is being eaten". Note that the similar "Fred is shaving" and "the clothes are soaking" remain grammatical. It is suggested that the progressive passive was popularized by the Romantic poets, and is connected with Bristol usage.
Many deponent verbs in Latin are survivals of the Proto-Indo-European middle voice."


Jean's Austen quote looks like a passival.

I think we need to know more about "Bristol usage"...


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[french frank]

It is native English speakers' usage that determines English grammar.

And it's not really so terrible if two or more variants exist at the same time.

I wonder if Alpie is quite happy with the interrogative form 'aren't I'?

Just spotted - Bristol usage. Not sure about the middle voice. What about 'Where bist going?' Correct or incorrect?

[jean]

I think it was the linguist M A K Halliday began to use the term ergative for this sort of verbal function in English, and it seems to have become widely accepted.

If only Latin as well as Greek had had a middle voice, those Victorian grammarians might have been more relaxed about their binary opposition between active and passive.

I too am agog to hear more about Bristol usage!

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[jean]

What about 'Where bist going?' Correct or incorrect?

Thou beest is a dialect variant for thou art I believe. Someone must have been the first to have the bright idea of combining the present tense of the verb to be with the present participle to form a new tense.

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[vinteuil]

.... It is suggested that the progressive passive was popularized by the Romantic poets, and is connected with Bristol usage.




.

... I blame that Joseph Cottle with his meddlesome Bristol ways -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Cottle

,

http://www.friendsofcoleridge.com/membersonly/CB28/CB28CroninCottle.pdf

[mangerton]

A usage which hasn't spread this side of the border and so does not cause consternation on this thread is the Scots it wants done - though it is found in some varieties of American English. This article recognises its probable Scots origns.

And don't forget Jane Austen's While the boxes were unpacking - continuous forms of the passive were very late arrivals on the grammatical scene.

Before I clicked on your link, I was going to make a tongue-in-cheek "Don't blame the Scots" reply. Then I read the words "Needs washed", and I could hear my mother's voice from years ago, usually with reference to my face, or knees.

Never "needs washing".

[vinteuil]

Thou beest is a dialect variant for thou art I believe. Someone must have been the first to have the bright idea of combining the present tense of the verb to be with the present participle to form a new tense.

... bin't it just the Wessex version of German 'du bist'?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I wonder if Alpie is quite happy with the interrogative form 'aren't I'?

I have mentioned this one earlier on this thread.

As a nation, we have a reputation for being worst than most in our ability/willingness to speak other languages. We don't seem to manage our own very well.

[jean]

...we have a reputation for being worst than most...

That is a truly terrible thing to be!

[vinteuil]

I have mentioned this one earlier on this thread.

As a nation, we have a reputation for being worst than most in our ability/willingness to speak other languages. We don't seem to manage our own very well.

... well, many grammarians wd certainly look askance at "worst than most".

But I think most native English speakers manage to use their language pretty well...

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

And this chart is quite good:

The Greek influence seems to be be relatively insignificant.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

... well, many grammarians wd certainly look askance at "worst than most".

[french frank]

As a nation, we have a reputation for being worst than most in our ability/willingness to speak other languages. We don't seem to manage our own very well.

Surely, we manage it as well as any other nation? It wouldn't seem reasonable to expect all 'English' people, regardless of age, background or location to speak an identical form of the English language when the function of language is to communicate meaning?

When was the English language set in aspic, exactly?

Cf Austen: ?1530 J. Rastell Pastyme of People sig. Bvv, He ordeynid that men shuld stand while the gospell was reding.

[jean]

The Greek influence seems to be be relatively insignificant.

Do you mean that English could not have developed something like the Greek middle voice independently of any direct influence from Greek itself?

But evidently it did.

My point was that if the grammarians had been thinking of Greek rather than Latin as a model for the categories they wanted to establish for English, they might have recognised it.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

When was the English language set in aspic, exactly?

I wasn't suggesting it should be - only that a free-for-all isn't necessarily a better way forward.