Return-Path: Message-Id: <9110141834.AA02848@relay1.UU.NET> Date: Mon Oct 14 18:44:16 1991 Reply-To: And Rosta Sender: Lojban list From: And Rosta Subject: Re: please, no passives To: John Cowan , Ken Taylor In-Reply-To: (Your message of Wed, 09 Oct 91 14:32:26 EDT.) <15337.9110091921@ucl.ac.uk Status: RO X-From-Space-Date: Mon Oct 14 18:44:16 1991 X-From-Space-Address: cbmvax!uunet!cuvma.bitnet!LOJBAN Bob Chassell writes: >Please, do not use the term `passive' when you can use the term >`conversion' and not drag with it an English presumption. I sympathize with your reasons, but we should be aware that _passive_ and _conversion_ are technical terms in linguistics: _passive_ refers to object-to-subject promotion, while _conversion_ is normally used when a word changes syntactic category with no concommitant morphological marking. Perhaps you should instead advocate use of Lojban technical vocabulary like _cmavo_ and _rafsi_ (& all those other words I utterly fail to understand!). -------------- And