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#175036 03/24/08 07:53 PM
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zmjezhd Offline OP
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We have recrimination and recriminate and also criminate which is a weakish, disaugmented form of incriminate (where in- does not mean 'not'): all from the Latin crimen, criminis, 'charge, accusation; guilt, crime' which yields English crime. (It is an interesting digression that the accusative case stems from a faulty loan translation of the Greek αιτιατικη πτωσις (aitiātikē ptōsis) 'the causal, or causative, case'.) Another interesting re- word is recidivist (along with recidivism and recidivate) from Latin recado, recadere, 'to fall back'; cado is interesting because English case is from the past passive participle casus, which is the loan translation of Greek πτωσις (ptōsis) above. German translates this as Fall as in "Die Welt ist alles, was ist der Fall." (The world is all that is the case. Wittgenstein Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.)


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 Originally Posted By: zmjezhd
Latin crimen, criminis, 'charge, accusation; guilt, crime' which yields English crime. (It is an interesting digression that the accusative case stems from a faulty loan translation of the Greek αιτιατικη πτωσις (aitiātikē ptōsis) 'the causal, or causative, case'.)


Deponents can be interesting.

And also, in this particular case, as well as the word 'case' used as a grammatical term (accusative case), when being investigated, in English a crime is called a case.

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zmjezhd Offline OP
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Deponents can be interesting.

Yes. Deponents which are passive in form but active in meaning, but active in meaning. I've always found the nexus of medio-passive, reflexive, and stative verbs intriguing.

(The middle participle, still active in Greek, (cf. -menos as in hapax legomenon), has become fossilized in Latin climen, crimen, foemina, limen, omen, etc. )

[Corrected silly mistake.]

Last edited by zmjezhd; 03/25/08 10:51 PM.

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 Originally Posted By: zmjezhd
Deponents can be interesting.

Yes. Deponents which are passive in form but active in form, but active in meaning. I've always found the nexus of medio-passive, reflexive, and stative verbs intriguing.


Sorry, what did you mean by "passive in form but active in form..."? Or was "active in form" a typo so the sentence should have been just "passive in form but active in meaning" perhaps?

Yes, I like middle-passive reflexives. In fact the word itself (reflexive) has a certain ring to it - one of my favourite grammatical terms I think. \:D

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zmjezhd Offline OP
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what did you mean by "passive in form but active in form..."?

Not enough sleep. I meant deponents are passive in form but active in meaning. Like loquor, looks like a passive verb, but it means 'I speak'. Or non sequitur 'it does not follow'.


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