Andrew said:
Mediopassive. :up: You may be right, and I am not confident enough to say you are wrong.
Claudia Haase on
Middle Constructions in English (2000) explains:
1.1 What are middles?
The best way to explain middles is perhaps to give some designations and then some examples for middle constructions. Nesfield said 1898 that middles are “active in form but passive in meaning“. Jesperson calls them “activo-passive“ (as do Bresnan 1982b and Levin 1982).
As well used are the terms “middle voice“ (e.g. Andrews 1982), “middle“(e.g. Bresnan 1982a), and “mediopassive“(e.g.Bresnan 1982c). Brown and Miller mention the terms “pseudo- intransitive” or “patient- subject construction”. There also exist the term “promotion to subject”, which describes the shift of grammatical functions from active to a middle sentence. The most common expression is “middle”, ....
1.2 Examples
(1) Mary washes the woolens well. active
(1a) The woolens are washed well (by Mary). passive
(1b) The woolens wash well. middle
(2) Hugo sells sports cars quickly. active
(2a) The sports cars are sold quickly (by Hugo). passive
(2b) Sports cars sell quickly. middle
In middles the change of the subject-object focus is the same as in passive (compare 1a-1b, 2a-2b). Only there is no change in verbal morphology. The verb remains active. Instead, middle constructions need markers like adverbs or modals,....
1.3 General characteristics
In middles not the subject plays the responsible role for the action, but in middles the grammatical function of the subject is in some kind generalised.
E.g. Sports cars sell quickly means that people in general like to buy them. This fabric washes easily means the same as This fabric is easily washable or People in general can wash this fabric easily.4 When a non- subject role is promoted to subject the original subject is lost.
Andrew said:
'The book reads well' is sometimes given as an example of mediopassive, on Wikipedia for instance, but I have a bit of trouble with the idea of 'read' having a stative meaning because...
First, what about stative,
the book is readable? Second, couldn't the phrase 'has stative meaning' (See SIL) mean stative like? With mediopassive constructs the patient holds the subject position. There isn't an actor.
With regard to the mediopassive voice in Modern English, there's a paper called
"Curtains like these are selling right in the city of Chicago for $1.50" – The mediopassive in American 20th-century advertising language by Marianne Hundt. Tdol's finds relate to advertising as well. Amazon advertises well. ;-)
All the best. :-D