The book reads well.

[Casiopea]

Originally Posted by Dawnstorm

...while the clothes being washed undergo a change, in the case of the book, it's the reader that undergoes the change, not the book.

But I'm not sure how this difference is fundemental, in a way that it should prevent people from saying "the book reads well."

That's kind of where I am, too. Nice summary, though.

As for philosophy, interpretations, as you have so skillfully shown, abound, so what say we stick to pragmatics, if that's OK with you?

[Dawnstorm]

Originally Posted by Casiopea

As for philosophy, interpretations, as you have so skillfully shown, abound, so what say we stick to pragmatics, if that's OK with you?

Pragmatics is best. When, where, how often, in what situations, reactions when corrected.

That's complicated enough without looking for "authority" in intangibles.

[Philly]

Originally Posted by Andrew Whitehead

Links trading is a futile excercise, but to put a perspective on it I get 1,190, 000 hits if I Google my own name, which would suggest that the world talks about me more than it talks about "the book reads well"...
To be more specific, counting Google hits is as a measure of use is about as unscientific as you can get. Many links are multiple references to the same phrase - something that is fairly obvious if you use Google Preview.
How many documents are there on the web? 19, 100 of them mentioning "the book reads well" is a very small percentage. Compare this with
"a good book" 456,000,000 hits
"a good book to read" 330,000,000 hits
"a well written book" 102,000,000 hits
These phrases are obviously far, far more common than 'the book reads well', not just slightly more common but by several orders of magnitude - to be precise "a good book" is used 24,000 times more often than 'the book reads well"! Such a huge difference cancels fudging by multiple references, and shows that it is a little used colloquialism. Wikipedia supports this view, describing mediopassive as:-
"... hardly ever used in English with the active voice or passive."

I've got a small bone to pick with you, Andrew. I cannot reproduce the Google results for any of your phrases. I can't get anything that even comes close when I search for the complete phrases. However if I do a Google search for "book reads well" in the same fashion that I presume you must have done your searches (i.e. without the quotation marks), the number of Google hits is 138,000,000 for the phrase that you dislike so much. Oops! That's more than you got for "a well written book".
.
Don't get me wrong, though. Despite the incorrect numbers, I've found the discussion very interesting.

[pedant]

Tdol said (10th March) that 'it would not be a great start to an interview to use "hiya".

I must strongly disagree. I'm a world class contractor who has probably had a great many more interviews than most, and my opening line (either by phone, by email, or in person) is, and always has been, "hiya, how are you doing. I've read your blurb, worrissit you want me to sort out for you?"

People really appreciate the normality of it, most people want to employ normal people, not linguists!

Then again, I do market myself as a 'fan cleaner'.

...and as far as signs go...they've got around 10 words max to get an important message across. In Australia you can readily see signs stating 'No standing in the middle of the road'. Linguists will probably either

(a) struggle to comprehend it
(b) complain about it to the authorities
(c) stand in the middle of the road to see what is wrong with doing so
(d) get a $300 fine

[Tdol]

'worrisit'- this would incomprehensible in many contexts; if you tried to clean fans in China, you might have to adjust your notions of normality
hiya- this maybe fine for a fan cleaner, but in many contexts it would be completely inappropriate- try starting a viva this way

[Andrew Whitehead]

Originally Posted by casiopea

As for philosophy, interpretations, as you have so skillfully shown, abound, so what say we stick to pragmatics, if that's OK with you?

I would say the 'philosophy' (to use that somewhat condescending term...) is pragmatic. A sequence of marks or sounds has no intrinsic meaning, so the only meaning a word has is the ideas or 'philosophy' attached to it by society. Take that away, and you have no language.
.

Originally Posted by philly

I cannot reproduce the Google results for any of your phrases

I would be surprised if you could! Do the same search 5 times and you get 5 different results - that is normal.

Originally Posted by philly

However if I do a Google search for "book reads well" in the same fashion that I presume you must have done your searches (i.e. without the quotation marks), the number of Google hits is 138,000,000 for the phrase that you dislike so much.

You presume wrongly... I used quotation marks.

[MrPedantic]

Originally Posted by Casiopea

Note, in all three voices the adverb easily modifies the verb, not the object:

Active: X easliy peels Y
Active: X peels Y easily
Active: Easily, X peels Y
Passive: Y was peeled easily.
Mediopassive: Y peels easily.

In other words, Y does not "do" anything, nor does it have to "do" anything. It's acted upon. Pragmatics tells us that: oranges can't peel themselves. In sum, why should the fact that the book doesn't do anything here be a criterion?

Mediopassive: The book reads well.

All the best.

Yes, indeed: you and I know that "the book" is the subject, but not the agent, in this usage.

But if you were new to English, you might well interpret the sentence with "the book" as the agent of the action. In which case, you would naturally take "easily" to mean that the manner of the action performed by the book was "easy".

It would be a puzzling interpretation, of course; but you would have arrived at it in a rational way.

(I'm not sure why "easily" should be an indicator, by the way: it points to the manner of the action, not the identity of the agent.)

MrP

PS Actually, though, my point wasn't that the fact that "the book" doesn't do anything should be a criterion: it was that even though "the book" doesn't do anything, the structure might have naturally arisen by simple transference from contexts where the subject does do something, e.g. "The carriage drives well".

[MrPedantic]

A passive voice talks about what happens to the object of a verb, which is why we can ignore the actor.

A mediopassive, as I understand it (my field is literature, not linguistics!) differs from the usual passive by talking about an action that changes the state of the object.
Put simply
passive - the results of the action on the object - "the orange was peeled"
mediopassive - describe the action on the object - "the orange peels easily"

1. The orange peels easily.

— "orange" is the subject here, and the patient in the action; the agent is unexpressed; there is no object.

Cf.

2. Bill read the book.

— active, transitive; Bill is the subject and the agent in the action; the book is the object.

3. The book was read.

— passive; the book is the subject and the patient in the action; the agent is unexpressed; there is no object.

4. The book reads well.

— intransitive; the book is the subject; there is no object, as the verb expresses not an action, but a state. (It also requires an adverbial complement to complete its sense.)

#3 expresses an action, while #4 expresses a quality.

MrP

[Andrew Whitehead]

the verb expresses not an action, but a state

You too are not understanding the issue with 'reads'.

You say it is describing a 'state', but where is the stative quality in the verb 'reads'? I have asked this several times now but it has not been answered.

As far as I can see there is a circular argument going on here: a verb in a mediopassive construction has to have a stative quality, and it gets that quality by being used in a mediopassive construction.

[Casiopea]

Originally Posted by MrPedantic

Actually, though, my point wasn't that the fact that "the book" doesn't do anything should be a criterion: it was that even though "the book" doesn't do anything, the structure might have naturally arisen by simple transference from contexts where the subject does do something, e.g. "The carriage drives well".

Your explanations are, as always, Mr P, very clear.

I was trying to narrow the scope of the discussion. My intention was to support your example by explaining further (to those who might assume "do" could be a criterion) that is wasn't and couldn't be.

I should have made that clearer at the time. My apologies for adding to the semantics-gone-mad this thread seems to have taken.

All the best.