[tei-council] active/passive again

[Gabriel BODARD]

On 06/08/2012 16:02, Martin Holmes wrote:
>> @active	identifies the ‘active’ participants in a non-mutual
>> relationship, or all the participants in a mutual one.
>
> This rather suggests to me that where @mutual is used, @active and
> @passive should not be, and vice versa. Are the examples of relations in
> which there are active and passive participants, but also groups of
> mutual ones?

Right, it is saying that @active/@passive and @mutual should not be used 
simultaneously, but that @active may be used on its own, and its meaning 
would be (as far as I can tell) identical to @mutual.

> I can't, but I feel as though there must be a better terminology than
> subject/object, which comes loaded with linguistic baggage.

That's true, but they have the advantage over active/passive in that the 
linguistic/grammatical baggage they bring with them is more likely to be 
correct. In the phrase A is father of B, A is both grammatically active 
and the subject of the sentence, and B is both grammatically passive and 
the object of the sentence. But in the phrase A was killed by B, the 
active/passive definitions are broken (or at the very least confusing), 
whereas subject/object are still grammatically (and logically) true.

-- 
Dr Gabriel BODARD
(Research Associate in Digital Epigraphy)

Department of Digital Humanities
King's College London
26-29 Drury Lane
London WC2B 5RL

Email: gabriel.bodard at kcl.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0)20 7848 1388
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http://www.digitalclassicist.org/
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