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> My thoughts on your question: It should be obvious from your examples of > possible agents that the agent is *not* obvious or unimportant, thus it's not a > case of "middling out" the agent. Maybe it "should" be obvious, but it isn't to me. If it had been, I probably wouldn't have asked the question in the first place. (Just to be clear, I find the above response to be a bit discourteous.) How are my example subjects any different from example subjects I could give for the "unmiddled" version of "Mice kill easily"? (An example of middle voice from Lexical Semantics.) Cats kill mice easily. Traps kill mice easily. Falling anvils kill mice easily. Paraplegic asthmatic toddlers kill mice easily. The point of "middling out" the subjects in those cases, as I understand it, is that exactly what is killing mice easily is just not germane to the discussion. Not necessarily that it's obvious or unimportant (though in many cases it will be), just that it's not relevant. I might add that I did choose vaguely plausible subjects for "[Agent] makes the sky blue," but I didn't have to. I could just as easily have said, "A turquoise bleegle radish makes the sky blue," and it would have served the same purpose in the sentence - without being at all obvious, any more than falling anvils and paraplegic asthmatic toddlers are. > The sky is the experiencer of the state of > being blue. Nothing makes the sky blue, although it's blue for a reason, it just is blue. I don't deny that the sky is the experiencer of the state of being blue. Any patient of a state verb is the experiencer of the state in question. The question is whether there is a possible agent. You say no, but I honestly am not seeing why you say so. To say "nothing makes the sky blue" strikes me at first blush as being a philosophical assumption, not something inherent in the argument structure. It's entirely possible I'm missing something - I just want to know what it is. > Besides, if you use a middle voice on A/P-x, the meaning is > different. My whole question is, "In what way is the meaning different?" The A/P-s version of my sentence would be "[Agent] makes the sky blue," or "[Agent] blues the sky." The A/P-d version would be "[Agent] keeps the sky blue" or "[Agent] maintains the sky in the state-of-being-blue." If I then use middle voice on those, the glosses would basically become (if very artificially): "Something-which-cannot-be-expressed-as-a-subject makes the sky blue." and "Something-which-cannot-be-expressed-as-a-subject keeps the sky blue." Your assertion is that these are different from: P-s: "The sky is blue." and P-d: "The sky continues to be blue." My question is, "Where is the difference in meaning?" Perhaps the difference is completely obvious to you, but bear in mind it isn't completely obvious to me.