"Curtains like these are selling right in the city of Chicago for $1.50" – The mediopassive in American 20^th-century advertising language

Author： Hundt Marianne

Publisher： Rodopi

ISSN： 0921-5034

Source： Language and Computers, Vol.55, Iss.1, 2006-01, pp. : 163-183

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Abstract

The distinction between transitive and intransitive verbs has been a notoriously difficult one in English. A verb like open, for instance, could be used transitively and intransitively as early as Old English. The focus of this paper is on verbs that typically require two participants (an agent and a patient) but that can also be used intransitively with the patient in subject position, as in Curtains like these are selling for $1.50. English mediopassive constructions, unlike their equivalents in other languages, are not morphologically marked by a reflexive pronoun or a reflexive clitic. A corpus of late nineteenth and twentieth-century American mailorder catalogues is used to test whether mediopassive constructions have been spreading since late Modern English. The data are also used to test constraints on mediopassive formation and the development of mediopassive and related constructions (reflexive constructions and adjectives in –able).