Harākti: Difference between revisions

Harākti has three voices: active, mediopassive, and passive. The first two, active and mediopassive, are inherited from Proto-Indo-European. The forms of mediopassive are very similar to those in Hittite mediopassive (as well as the active ones). The passive, on the other hand, is an innovation, although its forms are very similar to the mediopassive forms. It is thought the passive formed by merging the -l- past participle with the mediopassive.

The active voice is used by verbs that denote some sort of action, which is most verbs. The mediopassive and passive voices are a bit different. The mediopassive is used by some stative verbs by default. However, when an action verb is used in the mediopassive, the meaning is usually reflexive, or passive when used in the 3rd person. Stative verbs can be used in the active voice as well, but the use is restricted - stative verbs (that are mediopassive by default) in the active voice then convey some sort of action involved and are used in combination with adverb of direction, as in ''to sit down''. The passive corresponds to the passive forms in other languages, but not every verb has a passive form - especially stative imperfective verbs. Also, the passive is usually not used when the corresponding translation would be ''to be (adjective)'', as one might expect, but such verbs are mediopassive. An example of such a verb is ''tērsehī'' (to be thirsty).