[Ads-l] Trump's middle voice

[Laurence Horn]

> On Apr 19, 2017, at 11:06 AM, Herb Stahlke <hfwstahlke at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> This morning on Morning Joe there was a clip of Pres.Trump saying, "We have
> to take care of health care, and as soon as health care takes care of,
> we'll start on tax reform."  It didn't sound like he left out "Itself,"
> intending a reflexive construction.  This sounds like the sort of middle
> voice construction we have in "This book reads easily," where the verb is
> active but the direct object occurs as subject.”
> 
Interesting.  Perhaps even the passive (“as soon as health care is taken care of”) would too blatantly evoke the agent (the care-of-takers) in the optional by-phrase, while the middle really makes it seem as though it’s the responsibility of health care itself to take care of itself, not that of Congress or the executive branch.  (One point analysts have made about middles is that they pretty much exclude even impersonal agents:  “This book {can be read/??reads} easily by anyone”.)

LH    

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