Unusual verb form: "While the parcels were bringing down and displaying"

In Jane Austen's 1815 novel Emma, she writes (Volume 2, Chapter 6):

They went in; and while the sleek, well-tied parcels of 'Men's Beavers' and 'York Tan' were bringing down and displaying on the counter, he said ...

This verb form is peculiar. I would have expected to read that the parcels "were brought down" or "were being brought down". But as written, it looks like the parcels themselves are doing the bringing, rather than having it done to them. What is going on here?

Solution 1:

This is the passival, not the middle voice. This Language Log entry covers the issue pretty well. Read it—it’s very entertaining and full of information.

The summary is that before the 18th century, the passival (“were bringing down”) was the only way to express this in English. Around the middle of the 18th century, the progressive passive (“were being brought down”) first appeared as an alternative to the passival. The progressive passive was still being criticized (or should I say was still criticizing) in favor of the passival during the early part of the 20th century, but by then it had completely supplanted the passival. In contemporary English, as Charles Goodwin implied in his comment, the passival is completely ungrammatical.

Solution 2:

It’s an archaic form; the given sentence is not grammatical in modern English.

It’s an example of the passival, an archaic construction of certain passives (described well in this Language Log post). Apparently, at the time Austen was writing, “the trunks were being brought down” would only barely (if at all) have been considered grammatical; that construction (the progessive passive) first appeared in the late 18th century. The passival was the standard form, then, for what we would now express with a progressive passive.

As @RegDwight and @FumbleFingers point out, the passival is at least very close to the middle voice, the construction we use today in sentences like “dinner is cooking”, “the books are selling well”, and “you’re looking good!” Honestly, I don’t understand if there’s a clear distinction between the passival and the middle voice. Some sources I can find online (older ones) seem to regard them as the same thing, simply saying that this construction was acceptable in many more contexts in the past than it is today. Others (eg the linked LL post above) seem to suggest that historical linguists now regard them as two separate constructions. I’m afraid I am not au fait with modern historical linguistics; can anyone more knowledgeable clear this up?

Solution 3:

Per @RegDwight's comment, it's an example of the "Middle Construction/Voice", so-called because it's not the passive voice (that would be "the parcels were brought down"). Nor is it the active voice ("the parcels" aren't doing the "bringing").

If you don't grasp that, and haven't yet followed the above link, first reassure yourself you don't have a problem with the display on a ticket vending machine saying "The ticket is printing", then check out the link. @Kosmonaut explains it better than me.

Here's the Wiktionary take on it. English no longer has a distinct verb form for the middle voice (many languages have one), but we can still force the construction using existing verb forms, sometimes with the help of a reflexive pronoun...

active : I charged the battery overnight.

passive : The battery was charged overnight.

middle : The battery charged [itself?] overnight.