Barber 1975 on Voice in Ancient Greek

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Stephen Carlson
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Barber 1975 on Voice in Ancient Greek

Post by Stephen Carlson »

The Procedings of the Berkeley Linguistics Society has an article back in 1975 about the Greek voice system by an E. Barber: http://elanguage.net/journals/bls/article/view/1998
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
cwconrad
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Re: Barber 1975 on Voice in Ancient Greek

Post by cwconrad »

While Barber recognizes that the middle in Greek is fundamentally marking subject-affectedness, his failure to bring "deponents" (a.k.a. media tantrum, passiva tantrum) into consideration undercuts some significant points that he does make (e.g. that the Greek active inflection is a sort of catch-all for verbs not marked for subject-affectedness, that the Greek middle marking subject-affectedness comprises both reflexivity and passivity in a common form. Kemmer and Allan have gone far, far beyond that.
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
Stephen Carlson
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Re: Barber 1975 on Voice in Ancient Greek

Post by Stephen Carlson »

It's a 10-page article form 1975, not a recent monograph. Of course, it will be less comprehensive. But it seems short and clear enough to give to students to read and use as a jumping off point to explain deponents as middles.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
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