Labile verbs is a source of ambiguity of natural languages (only western ones?) that we are all accustomed to.

The bell rang should become The bell was rung, either way it means The bell rang another bell.

"the bell was rung" illustrates a cause (and introduces a question: who rang the bell?)

"the bell rang" illustrates an effect (the vibration and sound of the bell as it rings).

i think this is more an illustration of the ambiguity of the root word "ring", which can be an action by a subject upon an object, or to describe the behavior of the object itself.

That ambiguity results from the elimination of cases, other languages still have them (and I perceive English to have as well, I just treat them all as homonym). You wouldn't say that foo(a,b) has ambiguity, because foo(NULL, &b) and foo(&a, NULL) both exist.

There are many verbs like this, and English is somewhat open toward using verbs that way, or becoming so.

Did English speakers say "this novel reads well" two, three hundred years ago?

I have always wondered about this. The verb for the first person is to 'see'. To a third person you 'show'

For the first person there is 'listen' (or 'hear'). Does English not have a corresponding word for the third person ?

What about Germanaic or Nordic languages ? Do they have a third person analogue of 'listen' ?

AFAIK listen used to be used therefor[sic] but it has fallen out of use nowadays. From wiktionary:

> Listen the watchman’s cry upon the wall.

Edit: formatting

'Hear the watchman’s cry upon the wall' works the same way, no ?

I have clarified what I am looking for in a cousin comment.

"tell"?

Ah! That's not bad but it's not the same thing. Good nevertheless.

I can 'show' (or point someone to a) a sight that I am not myself creating in anyway. The word I am looking for would mean to 'make you hear' in the same may to show is to make you see.

I showed him the distant tower.

I ??? him the faint sound.

play?

I played him the faint sound.

Yes that will indeed work in a few cases.

You appear to be looking for the word show, which is not specific to visual phenomena.

I see (pun intended)

As the sibling points out show works for audio as well. Also vision is directed while audio is not. You need to look at some thing specifically in order to see it, you do not need to turn your head, to listen, the sound needs just to be there. You might need to alter your perception filter for both.

Interesting. This is indeed a funny gap in the language.

"Show" work for any sort of visual thing you might want to present to someone. It's a bitransitive verb: it takes both a direct and indirect object in addition to the subject:

    "Bill showed Marsha her new car."
     ^^^^        ^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^ 
     Subject     D.Obj  Indirect Obj.

For an auditory thing, our common words seem to subdivide it based on the sound source: "tell" for presenting speech to someone, "play" for presenting something musical:

    "Amy told Fred a story."
    "Bill played Fred a song."

"Play" has grown to encompass recorded audio, so is probably the closest thing to an auditory equivalent to "show".

There is also "audition" which can be used transitively, but I don't think it works bitransitively. You can say "I auditioned a bunch of saxophone recordings.", but you can't audition something to someone.

Languages are so interesting, although I have zero talent in acquiring them. I don't care much for speaking them, pronouncing them right, but I do wish I could read some of the literature in their original language.

In Finnish you might use "kuunteluttaa". You start with "kuunnella", "to listen" and inflect it in the way that turn a verb into "make someone verb". This particular example is a little unusual, but the same thing is commonly used with e.g. "taste". It works with all kinds of verbs, so it comes handy when you want your car serviced or your house painted.

Thanks for showing :)

TIL!

Debates whether to update the sidenote with an explainer on ambitransitive and labile verbs

Please do! It will fit the spirit of your splendid post, unpacking the complexity of a thing we take for granted (at least as native English speakers)

Now do clam steamers and shrimp fried rice.

I'm familiar with "steamer clams", but not "clam steamers".

In "shrimp fried rice", "shrimp" is a noun adjunct [1], which is when you use a noun as an adjective.

The charming ambiguity comes from it being unclear whether "shrimp" is an adjunct noun modifying "fried rice" ("shrimp fried-rice") or modifying the past participle verb "fried" ("shrimp-fried rice").

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noun_adjunct

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headline#Headlinese

I thought the charming ambiguity came from "fried" either acting as an adjective or as a verb. These aren't just any shrimp, they're chef shrimp, and they've prepared some delicious fried rice for us. Isn't that incredible? Shrimp fried rice.

Right. It's a noun phrase either way. The question is whether it is rice that were fried by shrimp ("shrimp-fried rice") or fried rice containing shrimp ("shrimp fried-rice").

Yeah, they're usually just called "steamers". I put clam in front of them to disambiguate. But it's always bugged me. They're not steaming anything! They're getting steamed.

In modern usage (e.g. in gaming communities) "carries" has become not only ambitransitive but also a noun.

If something "carries" or is "a carry", it means it is so strong it metaphorically carries the rest of the setup with it. For example:

> This card carries.

> These two are the carries of the team.