Say you're taking a car out for a test drive. In the case of the mediopassive examples shown above, the action is being qualified (usually with an adverb or adverbial phrase) as though it is being evaluated as to how well the object responds to the action being performed on it. The noun alarm, in this case, is both the doer of the action in the first example and the receiver of the action in the second. The verbs are classified as ergative verbs, in which the objects of transitive verbs and subjects of intransitive verbs are typically marked by the same linguistic forms.Įrgative verbs tend to be discussed more in other languages, but some do turn up in English ("The alarm sounded" "We sounded the alarm"). The definition implies that mediopassive voice demonstrates a shift of sorts in verb usage. In the dictionary, mediopassive voice is defined as "a form or voice of a transitive verb which by origin is of the middle voice or is reflexive and shows by its meaning that it is developing toward passive use, or is used in both middle and passive meanings, or is used only in passive meanings." Mediopassive voice is considered a form of middle voice, which asserts that a person or thing both performs and is affected by the action represented. The mediopassive is often employed by critics, in constructions like "the dish ate salty."
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