mediopassive

English

Alternative forms

• medio-passive

Etymology

From medio- +‎ passive.

Adjective

mediopassive (not comparable)

1. (grammar) Pertaining to a voice of a transitive verb that is both middle voice and passive voice or reflexive and passive voice.
   • 1989, Jon Philip Dayley, University of California publications in linguistics: volume 115, →ISBN:

     Whereas the function of the passive voice is to remove the agent from the discussion of a transitive activity, the function of the mediopassive voice is to discuss an event in a way which explicitly denies the involvement of an initiating agent.

   • 1990, Kazuhiko Yoshida, The Hittite Mediopassive Endings in -ri, →ISBN, page 103:

     Until about 1900 the r-element attached to mediopassive endings was merely regarded as a marginal feature peculiar to Halo-Celtic; it was taken as evidence for Italo-Celtic because it was supposed to be an innovation of these two groups.

Translations

in the mediopassive voice

• German: ^{(please verify)} mediopassiv
• Greek: μεσοπαθητικός (el) (mesopathitikós)
• Hungarian: mediopasszív
• Portuguese: médio-passivo

Noun

mediopassive (plural mediopassives)

1. (grammar) A mediopassive construction; a phrase that uses the mediopassive voice.
   • 2014, Antoinette Renouf, Andrew Kehoe, The Changing Face of Corpus Linguistics, →ISBN, page 177:

     A systematic study of mediopassive sell in the BNC (Figure 6) confirms that – at least for this verb – the constraint seems to hold: the vast majority of mediopassives with sell contain some kind of modification, namely 92.2%.

   • 2014, Marianne Hundt, Late Modern English Syntax, →ISBN, page 107:

     More importantly, it is highly context dependent: (a) certain text types (such as advertising copy) seem to license bare mediopassives more than others (see Section 6.4.1), (b) contextually implied contrast may enable an inherent property reading of a bare mediopassive (see Sections 6.4.2.1 and 6.4.2.2), or the verb itself might foster bare mediopassive use (this seems to be the case with denominal verbs like zip, button, bolt, or clamp, see Goldberg and Ackerman 2001: 806).

Synonyms

• (mediopassive voice): middle voice

Derived terms

• medio-passivization

Translations

grammatical voice in which the actor of a stative verb is not expressed

• Portuguese: voz médio-passiva f

Further reading

• Mediopassive voice on Wikipedia.Wikipedia