At 9:28 AM -0400 5/28/97, Rolf Furuli wrote: >Dear Carl, > >Thank you for your excellent discussion of reflexive/passive verbs. > >A Scandinavian example: In old Norse the reflexive pronoun is "sik" >(equivalent to French "se" and German "sich"). We have the same >reflexive pronoun in Norwegian, written "seg". However, we also have a >passive form which is distinguished by the letter "s", and this "s" >can be traced back to the first letter of the old Norse reflexive >pronoun "sik" > >Norwegian: >Active: Han vasker (= he cleans/is cleaning) >Reflexive: Han vasker seg (= he cleans/is cleaning himself) >Passive: Han vaskes (= he is being cleaned). > >In Norwegian, therefore, a reflexive construction was original and it >evolved into a passive one. Thanks very much for this fascinating tidbit, Rolf. I will say that my ideas about evolution of reflexive into passive were somewhat speculative on my part, although I suspect that serious linguists have worked this out in scholarly literature of which I am unaware. I was a bit hesitant about generalizing about Indo-European because it's such an immense linguistic realm, and I am competent in (read that as "vaguely familiar with") so few of the IE languages. The sole authority upon which I based those assertions is the rather brief account in Andrew Sihler, _New Comparative Greek and Latin Grammar_ (Oxford UP, 1995), #414. "Voice." Sihler does indeed occasionally venture out into his own theories, but he seems to be generally sound and reliable. For those of you who don't know, I might note that Sihler's work is the replacement/update of the decades-long authoritative work of C.D. Buck, which had the same title (sans "New") and which was published by UChicagoP well over 50 years ago. Carl W. Conrad Department of Classics, Washington University One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO, USA 63130 (314) 935-4018 cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwc@oui.com WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/