Friday, December 20, 2019

middle voice - the beer pours a hazy yellow color


The beer pours a hazy yellow color with a huge white head.


Is this sentence OK in terms of using the verb "pour". I regularly find this phrase in beer reviews. Can the beer really pour something? I would understand the sentence: After pouring into the glass, the beer has yellow color with a huge white head…



Answer




This is a pattern common to many English verbs, which have both a transitive sense in which an action is carried out on a direct object and an intransitive sense in which the direct object becomes the subject and carries out the activity itself.



Grady is cooking dinner. → Dinner is cooking.
Dale looks at Sandra. → Sandra looks good.
Patty's flying a kite. → The kite is flying.



Sometimes the transitive sense represents a causative use of an originally intransitive verb; sometimes the intransitive verb represents a 'middle voice' use of an originally transitive verb.


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