The mediopassive voice is a

grammatical voice In linguistics, grammaticality is determined by the conformity to language usage as derived by the grammar of a particular speech variety. The notion of grammaticality rose alongside the theory of generative grammar, the goal of which is to form ...

that subsumes the meanings of both the

middle voice In grammar, the voice of a verb describes the relationship between the action (or state) that the verb expresses and the participants identified by its arguments (subject, object, etc.). When the subject is the agent or doer of the action, the ...

and the

passive voice A passive voice construction is a grammatical voice construction that is found in many languages. In a clause with passive voice, the grammatical subject expresses the ''theme'' or ''patient'' of the main verb – that is, the person or thing t ...

Description

Languages of the

Indo-European The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch ...

family (and many others) typically have two or three of the following voices: active, middle, and passive. "Mediopassive" may be used to describe a category that covers both the middle (or "medium") and the passive voice. In synchronic grammars, the mediopassive voice is often simply termed either "middle" (typical for grammars of e.g.

Ancient Ancient history is a time period from the History of writing, beginning of writing and recorded human history to as far as late antiquity. The span of recorded history is roughly 5,000 years, beginning with the Sumerian language, Sumerian c ...

and

Modern Greek Modern Greek (, , or , ''Kiní Neoellinikí Glóssa''), generally referred to by speakers simply as Greek (, ), refers collectively to the dialects of the Greek language spoken in the modern era, including the official standardized form of the ...

) or "passive" (typical for grammars of e.g. modern

Danish Danish may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark People * A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark * Culture of Denmark * Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish a ...

). In the oldest Indo-European languages, the distinction active/middle was the most important, whereas the development in later languages has generally been to replace the old distinction with (or to reinterpret it as) an active/passive distinction (e.g. modern English: to tease / to be teased). The

Proto-Indo-European language Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo-E ...

itself is typically reconstructed as having two voices, active and mediopassive, where the middle-voice element in the mediopassive voice was dominant. Ancient Greek also had a mediopassive in the present, imperfect, perfect, and pluperfect

tenses In grammar, tense is a category that expresses time reference. Tenses are usually manifested by the use of specific forms of verbs, particularly in their conjugation patterns. The main tenses found in many languages include the past, present, ...

, but in the

aorist Aorist (; abbreviated ) verb forms usually express perfective aspect and refer to past events, similar to a preterite. Ancient Greek grammar had the aorist form, and the grammars of other Indo-European languages and languages influenced by the I ...

and future tenses the mediopassive voice was replaced by two voices, one middle and one passive.

and

Albanian Albanian may refer to: *Pertaining to Albania in Southeast Europe; in particular: **Albanians, an ethnic group native to the Balkans **Albanian language **Albanian culture **Demographics of Albania, includes other ethnic groups within the country ...

have only mediopassive in all tenses. A number of Indo-European languages have developed a new middle or mediopassive voice. Often this derives from a

periphrastic In linguistics, periphrasis () is the use of one or more function words to express meaning that otherwise may be expressed by attaching an affix or clitic to a word. The resulting phrase includes two or more collocated words instead of one infl ...

form involving the active verb combined with a reflexive pronoun. This development happened independently in the

Romance languages The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language fam ...

, the

Slavic languages The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic, spoken during the Ear ...

, and the

North Germanic The North Germanic languages make up one of the three branches of the Germanic languages—a sub-family of the Indo-European languages—along with the West Germanic languages and the extinct East Germanic languages. The language group is also r ...

(Scandinavian) languages. North Germanic languages, and to some extent the Slavic languages, have fused the reflexive with the verb to form a new synthetic conjugation, whereas in the Romance languages the reflexive mostly remains separate.

Usage

The mediopassive can have many meanings depending on the context of the sentence. # Reflexive mediopassive. In Proto-Indo-European and the languages that descend from it, verbs that also had an active form could use the mediopassive in a reflexive sense, e.g. "I wash (myself)". This reflexive sense could also carry a sense of benefaction for the subject, as in the sentence "I sacrificed a goat (for my own benefit)." These constructions would have used the active form of "sacrificed" when the action was performed for some reason other than the subject's benefit. # Reciprocal mediopassive. The mediopassive can also be used in a reciprocal sense, e.g. "to fight" (with active) vs. "to fight each other" (with mediopassive). # Autocausative mediopassive describes situations where the subject causes itself to change state. # In

stative verb According to some linguistics theories, a stative verb is a verb that describes a state of being, in contrast to a dynamic verb, which describes an action. The difference can be categorized by saying that stative verbs describe situations that are ...

s. Some languages always used the mediopassive with verbs relating to standing, sitting, reclining, being afraid, being ashamed, and being pleased, which did not have an active form. # Intensive mediopassive. Classical Greek also used the mediopassive in an intensive sense, e.g. "to be a citizen" (with active) vs. "to do the duties of being a citizen" (with middle). # In

deponent verb In linguistics, a deponent verb is a verb that is active in meaning but takes its form from a different voice, most commonly the middle or passive. A deponent verb has no active forms. Languages with deponent verbs ''This list may not be exhau ...

s. Greek and Sanskrit both had the verb "to follow" in the mediopassive only. Latin had the form ''sequitur'' ("It follows". ''-tur'' is the mediopassive present 3rd person singular from PIE ''*-tor'') with the same usage. In all three languages the word "to follow" came from the same Proto-Indo-European root. # The mediopassive was combined with the subjunctive to form the future tense of the verb "to be" in Classical Greek. # The mediopassive can also be used as a passive form, especially when the mediopassive endings are combined with a specialized passive verb. This was very common in Sanskrit.

Examples

English

A few examples of

unaccusative verb In linguistics, an unaccusative verb is an intransitive verb whose grammatical subject is not a semantic agent. In other words, the subject does not actively initiate, or is not actively responsible for, the action expressed by the verb. An unaccusa ...

s in English with meanings similar to a mediopassive: * ''The book reads well.'' * ''The trousers wash easily.'' * ''Ripe oranges peel well.'' * ''The book was not selling.''

Spanish

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Cana ...

is an example of a modern language with a mediopassive voice, normally indicated by the use of a reflexive pronoun. This can variously have a middle-voice meaning (subject acting onto itself, or for its own benefit) or a passive-voice meaning (something acts onto the subject). An example sentence is ' The English translation is "The father became angry upon seeing his son break the lamp." The verb ' is said to be mediopassive because it comprises the reflexive pronoun ' and the simple verb ', which together literally mean "angered himself." This would be literally translated "The father angered himself upon seeing his son break the lamp."

Pragmatics In linguistics and related fields, pragmatics is the study of how context contributes to meaning. The field of study evaluates how human language is utilized in social interactions, as well as the relationship between the interpreter and the int ...

quickly rejects the middle-voice meaning for the intended mediopassive-voice meaning, translated above as "got angry," because the middle-voice is rarely used. Many intransitive Spanish verbs behave that way: ', I fell; ', I became tired.

Serbo-Croatian

Serbo-Croatian Serbo-Croatian () – also called Serbo-Croat (), Serbo-Croat-Bosnian (SCB), Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian (BCS), and Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS) – is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and ...

and other

are very similar in this respect to Spanish, employing the same constructs with the passive/reflexive particle ': '. This would be again literally translated "The father angered himself when his son broke the lamp." Similar constructs are ' "The lamp broke" and ' "The door closed." However, not all verbs permit such use. The (medio)passive is used when one is unable or does not want to express the actor: ' "The glass broke", implying it "just happened", almost "on its own".

North Germanic (Scandinavian)

The mediopassive is found in some contemporary Scandinavian languages like Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian (whereas for example Icelandic keeps up a formal distinction between the middle and the passive). The examples below are from

, but the situation is the same in

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

and

Norwegian Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to: *Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe * Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway * Demographics of Norway *The Norwegian language, including ...

. The passive use of the Danish mediopassive is probably predominant, but the medial use is quite frequent as well. Here are examples of sub-categories of the middle voice. # Reflexive: ' ("I remember my youth"/"I'm reminded of my youth"). The form ' is usually called passive, but the meaning is medial. The present active ' means "remind(s)". Historically, ' is a contraction of the active forms and the reflexive pronoun: ' ("she reminds herself") → ' ("she remembers"). "She" is both the agent and the patient, so the expression works in much the same way as reflexive middle forms of ancient Indo-European languages like Greek and Sanskrit. # Reciprocal: ' is the everyday expression equivalent in Danish to the English "See you." The present active is ' (we see); the mediopassive (commonly called passive) form is historically derived thus: ' ("they see themselves") → ' ("they are seen" or "they see themselves/see each other"). The third person forms have since been generalized by analogy to the first and second person, and as the future progressive is often expressed with simple present in Danish, the meaning is, "We'll be seeing each other." # Autocausative: ' ("He gets/is happy with his gift"), from '.

Armenian

Classical Armenian Classical Armenian (, in Eastern Armenian pronunciation: Grabar, Western Armenian: Krapar; meaning "literary anguage; also Old Armenian or Liturgical Armenian) is the oldest attested form of the Armenian language. It was first written down at ...

had a mediopassive form that was marked by changing the verb's thematic vowel instead of with a unique conjugation like in other

Indo-European languages The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutc ...

. Modern Armenian has retained some of these active/mediopassive pairs, but the distinction between the two voices is no longer productive.

References

{{Reflist Grammatical voices