mediopassive voice

The mediopassive voice is a grammatical construction where a verb, typically transitive, is used in a way that resembles the passive voice, but without explicitly stating the agent performing the action. It's considered a form of the middle voice, indicating that the subject both performs and is affected by the action, or that the action primarily concerns the subject.12

In English, this often appears with ergative verbs, where the subject is the recipient of the action, even though the verb is intransitive. For example, in "This window opens easily," the window is being opened, not performing the action of opening. This voice is frequently used in evaluative contexts, such as in reviews or by critics, to describe how something "takes" an action or how it is perceived. Examples include "the dish ate salty" or "the car drove smoothly". Some Anatolian languages also feature a mediopassive voice that marks actions affecting the subject or actions inherently internal to the subject.13