Quote:
Originally Posted by Englishlanguage  Can't a verb be ... ergative and ... middle voice? |
Yes!, and that's an excellent observation. Tense, as I had originially stated, has nothing to do with the difference between these two examples:
Ergative (past tense):
The house burnt down.
Middle (present tense):
The house burns down.
They are examples of an ergative verb in middle voice.
There are only three voices in English: active, passive, and middle or mediopassive.
... the intransitive construction of an ergative verb is often said to be in a middle voice, between active and passive, or in a mediopassive voice, between active and passive but closer to passive.
Source
!Correction! Middle (or mediopassive) voice Present tense: The house
burns down as the crowd looks on. <ergative>
Past tense: The house
burnt down yesterday. <ergative>
An ergative verb is a verb that may be either transitive or intransitive, and whose subject when it is intransitive plays the same semantic role as its direct object when it is transitive. For example, [burn down] is an ergative verb, such that the following sentences are roughly synonymous:
- The house burnt down.
- The house was burnt down.
- Someone burnt down the house.
... the intransitive construction does not permit an agent to be mentioned, and indeed can imply that no agent is present, ...
Source: ibid