Date:  Tue, 11 Oct 1994 21:59:46 -0700

From:  Birrell Walsh <birrell[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]WELL.SF.CA.US>

Subject: Re: -"had" Constructions



On Tue, 11 Oct 1994, Judith Rascoe wrote:



> Isn't there an Irish construction along the lines of "he had a drink taken".

> As I understand it, it's a faintly euphemistic way of suggesting that the

> subject has taken many drinks. ("He claimed he swerved to avoid the cat, but

> he had a drink taken if you ask me.") In this sense it reminds me a bit of

> what a Peruvian friend said about Spanish -- that lots of things seem to

> happen by themselves in that language ('the vase broke itself'). The 'had O

> part.' construction relieves the subject of onus. It's trying to shuffle the

> action into the "I had my car sideswiped" category, where the subject is

> victim.

>

My Sanskrit teacher pointed out to us that in Sanskrit, the active and

the passive have the same status - both derived from the verbal root, and

neither derived from the other. Thus they have even passives for

intransitives: "It is gone by me" as a way of saying "I go."



Maybe these bureaucratic passives, and the "had" constructions, date back

to this layer in *IndoEuropean?