Re: active vs. passive voice

[Ned Bedinger <doc -at- edwordsmith -dot- com>]

Ronquillo, Michael wrote:
> Why not use the word shown instead? 
> 
> I personally hate displayed as it reminds me of a store putting an item
> on display. 


Bingo.

A satisfying two-part explanation for the undocumented intransitive form 
of the verb 'display' appears to be staring back at me from Michael's 
comment.

The 'active vs passive voices' topic has carried me along, but now I'm 
going to make slight foray away from the trail, and into linguistic 
theory. I hope it won't UPSET anyone/everyone. I can't recall ever 
dabbling in linguistics on this list, so I should probably assume that 
linguistics is OT for techwhirlers? But nah, that wouldn't be me. 
Sorry, but if you don't care to read this kind of thing, allow me to 
remind you that you do have a delete key.

The two part explanation:

1. Display, as a noun, needs no further introduction.

2. I have a theory, but first I want to give you a little background. If 
I emigrated to a non-English speaking land and learned the language 
spoken there, that second language would undergo 'creolization' at my 
hands, as I grope around trying to learn the major features. I would 
then be able to speak a sort of creole or pidgin version of the 
;anguage. My version of the second language would probably have 
features, ranging from pronunciation to semantics, held over from 
English. One way I would cope with the need for common forms in the new 
language, like plurals, intensives, tenses, voice and so on, is by 
making them up partly from the fabric of English, and partly from 
vocabulary and semantics learned in the new language. Conversing in a 
barely-known language without recourse to English causes me to do 
exactly that.

Language speakers all over the world do this sort of thing in learning 
to speak the languages of tourists, for example, or in adopting foreign 
vocabulary tied to commerce, culture, technology, and so on. English 
does this prodigiously, of course, and that's my point.

An example from abroad: In the Tagalog-speaking region of the 
Philippines, the advertising slogan of the San Miguel Brewery once was 
"Mag-beer muna tayo." See it? They've turned the English word 'beer' 
into a verb. "First, let's drink some beer" is that slogan.

That's the well-known process by which the noun 'display' theoretically 
becomes the intransitive verb display, driven by a logical need for a 
new term that is specific to a then-new technology.

English doesn't reserve this facility only for foreign words. If I set 
up a display(n) of my wares at the Saturday flea market, I can also say 
(and be generally understood) that my wares are displayed(v,i) at the 
flea market. This usage and construction sounds right to my ear, and is 
just too commonly encountered to be a big dumb mistake made with a 
transitive verb. English (the living language) seems to allow it.

Always, IMHO.

Ned Bedinger
doc -at- edwordsmith -dot- com
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