kadioguy
Key Member
- Joined
- Mar 4, 2017
- Member Type
- Student or Learner
- Native Language
- Chinese
- Home Country
- Taiwan
- Current Location
- Taiwan
"The ball kicked" cannot mean that the ball is the undergoer of the act of kicking.
English has no morphological middle voice category, but does have lexical middle verbs and syntactic middle voice constructions.
active voice: Dennis broke the window.
passive voice: The window was broken (by me).
lexical middle voice: The window broke.
Example 3 may be considered lexical middle voice because it is a feature of the lexical meaning of the verb to break. Not all verbs can be used this way, e.g., The ball kicked cannot mean that the ball is the undergoer of the act of kicking.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/middle_voice
--------------------------------
If The ball kicked cannot mean that the ball is the undergoer of the act of kicking, what does The ball kicked mean? (Or how can I correct it?)
English has no morphological middle voice category, but does have lexical middle verbs and syntactic middle voice constructions.
active voice: Dennis broke the window.
passive voice: The window was broken (by me).
lexical middle voice: The window broke.
Example 3 may be considered lexical middle voice because it is a feature of the lexical meaning of the verb to break. Not all verbs can be used this way, e.g., The ball kicked cannot mean that the ball is the undergoer of the act of kicking.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/middle_voice
--------------------------------
If The ball kicked cannot mean that the ball is the undergoer of the act of kicking, what does The ball kicked mean? (Or how can I correct it?)
Last edited: