The Thought Occurs

Saturday 12 April 2014

The Exceptionality Of Medio-Receptive Voice

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 298):
… then there are the ‘indirect participants’ functioning as Complements to prepositions, some of which … are potential Subjects; these give various other kinds of receptive such as ‘Location–receptive’, for example the bed hadn’t been slept in, ‘Manner–receptive’, for example this pen’s never been written with, and so on. Normally these are also medio–receptives, that is, they are middle not effective clauses. But receptives with idiomatic phrasal verbs, such as it’s been done away with, she’s very much looked up to, that prize has never been put in for, are often ‘true’ receptives in the sense that the prepositional phrase really represents a participant

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 289):
Except in the special case of the medio–receptive voice, the Medium is obligatory in all processes; and it is the only element that is, other than the process itself. … The Medium is also the only element that is never introduced into the clause by means of a preposition (again with the same exception of medio–receptives); it is treated as something that always participates directly in the process.