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From: mat@linus.UUCP (Michael A. Turniansky)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: reposting of Bi-directional verbs
Message-ID: <703@linus.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 13-Feb-84 07:47:00 EST
Article-I.D.: linus.703
Posted: Mon Feb 13 07:47:00 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 14-Feb-84 01:38:21 EST
Organization: MITRE Corp., Bedford MA
Lines: 28



	It appears that I forgot to appease the line-eater, causing my
message to be munged.....here it is in its entirity:

------------------------------------------------------------------------
	I have mused about the following concept.  Take a look at the
following sentence:

	John Smith failed his Science class.

	Note that it makes a difference whether John is the teacher of the
class, or merely a student.  In the first case, "failed" is active: in the
second case, it is passive (or something like that.).  For a more striking 
example, how about a course of study where one class graded another class as
a unit?  Then we have "Mr Smith's class failed Ms. Jones' class."  Which
ones are the graders, and which the "gradees"?

	Verbs which exhibit this behavior, I term "bi-directional verbs".
So far, I have only discovered the one.  Care to post more examples?
"Missing positives" have been known and talked about for more than an
ordinate amount of time.  The subject, while ane, is also winding down.
This is a new class to think about.

                             --Mike Turniansky
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