[Andrew Whitehead]

OK. So, where do you think they got it from?

My hunch, guess, gut feeling, is that it came from some advertising blurb somewhere.

Originally Posted by Casiopea

Do I assume that?

That is what I heard when you said:-

First, what about stative, the book is readable? Second, couldn't the phrase 'has stative meaning' (See SIL) mean stative like?

OK. Explain this to me, because it sounds as if you're saying grammarians make up words and, moreover, in doing so they don't use rules.

I don't know where you get that idea from.

What I am saying is that they follow the same argument you have presented in this thread: 'the clothes wash well' is acceptable, 'the glass breaks easily' is acceptable', so by analogy 'the book reads well' must be acceptable because it follows the same structure.

First, what herd are they following? Aren't they, the grammarians, the supposed shepards?

Ideally they would be shepherds, but I don't think they are in reality. Do you blindly accept everything you read in a grammar book?

I suspect that too many grammar books are little more than rehashes of other grammar books. Have you never wondered why the same examples (such as 'the book reads well'...) keep reappearing? The writers take the safe option - follow the herd, then nobody will challenge them and if they do, they have a thousand references they can quote in defence.

And, yet, you don't seem to run with that pack, so why assume that "they" do?

You are quoting that argument right now

'That is, even if, let's say, people use "The book reads well" because they think it's posh, they are still using it. It's entered the wet-wear, it's been processed; it's now part of their grammar, the rules.'

and Tdol used it earlier. It is not my assumption.

I don't particularly agree with it, given that the majority of Anglophones are second-language users.

I recently read a chapter on Morphology, sematics and argument structure in which Fagan (1988) argues the verb read in English is lexically derived

If we accept the argument that in 'the book reads easily' is purely lexical, and that
"middles [...] are not used to
report events, but to attribute a specific property to some object"
so that 'read' is therefore, somehow, agentless so

The book reads easily = the book is easy to read

then by the same argument,

The food likes easily = the food is easy to like
the film enjoys easily = the film is easy to like
the job hates easily = the job is easy to hate
the dog catches easily = the dog is easy to catch

are all grammatically correct.