On Thu, 2001-10-25 at 13:45, Kimmo Huovila wrote: > > (Nor does the assertion that no one else is involved in the case of the > middle seem plausible. One typical middle construction (if I remember > correctly, this is what Kemmer argued) is the type 'this book sells > well' - where clearly others are involved. It is people who sell the > book.) True, there's other people involved, but! When I buy something at the grocery store there is other people involved, too: stockers, vegetable growers, on and on and on. Quite obviously--in my example, not in yours--if I write, "I buy food" my intent by using active voice is to focus the readers attention on the subject ("I") doing the action. In the case "this book sells well" the emphasis (relative to voice) is subject-intensive and thereby states the exclusion of other actors. In other words, the author's intention is to NOT talk about those other actors even though they ARE obviously there. I've often wondered whether the explanation of voice would benefit from the language of "point of view" as Porter applies it to tense/aspect. -- Mike Sangrey msangrey@BlueFeltHat.org Landisburg, Pa. "The first one last wins." "A net of highly cohesive details reveals the truth." --- B-Greek home page: http://metalab.unc.edu/bgreek You are currently subscribed to b-greek as: [jwrobie@mindspring.com] To unsubscribe, forward this message to leave-b-greek-327Q@franklin.oit.unc.edu To subscribe, send a message to subscribe-b-greek@franklin.oit.unc.edu