intransitive "making"

[M. Lynne Murphy]

----------
>From: Benjamin Barrett <gogaku at IX.NETCOM.COM>

>FWIW, this sounds like a special usage for some verbs like bake:
>
>(1) The cookies are baking.
>
>I don't remember what this is called, but I think it's an intransitive usage
>of certain transitive verbs.
>
>To me, at least, this sentence does *not* seem intransitive, it seems closer
>to being a transformation of
>
>(2) The cookies are being baked.


That doesn't mean it's not intransitive.  There's no object, so it's
intransitive.  What is true is that the subject has the patient role that
the object would "usually" have. This happens with other verbs as well:

Bake the cookies.  The cookies baked.
Melt the ice.  The ice melted.

(Would we call them ergative uses of the verbs?  That word always troubles
me, since I'm more used to hearing about ergative languages, rather than
ergative verbs.  And since the subject is nominatively case-marked...)

"The coffee is making" is different from these in that it seems my friends
would not say "The coffee made" as in "The coffee made while we were
clearing the table."  My hypothesis is that this comes from "coffeemaker",
since (a) the words are in the same order and same relation there (patient +
(nominalized) verb) and (b) the lack of a sentient agent when the
coffeemaker is making the coffee.  My friends say "the coffee is making"
after they do the work to make the coffee and are waiting for the
coffeemaker to do its work.

Incidentally, this family also uses "shoot" to mean "give a shot to" in the
context of "It's time to shoot the (diabetic) cat."  They're the 2nd family
I've met who have a diabetic cat and use "shoot" this way.  So, maybe it's
[diabetic-cat]-owner jargon.

Lynne, who's been taking notes at dinner parties