Greek Voice: Unresolved Questions (a can of worms)

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cwconrad
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Greek Voice: Unresolved Questions (a can of worms)

Post by cwconrad »

Stephen Carlson elsewhere in this forum wrote:What confuses people (at least in the SBL session) was the alternation between ἔρχεσθαι and έλθεῖν. After Rutger explained how the subject is affected in ἔρχεσθαι, there was an expectation in the audience that ἐλθεῖν should likewise be middle even though it is active. Similarly with so-called "future deponents." This inconsistency bothered people, so the active member of these pairs must be explicitly explained as being unmarked for subject-affectedness instead of marking non-affectedness or activity. Diachronically, the reason may be that the middle forms are more recent, when the voice system was more established in Greek, but synchronically the reason has to be that only the middle forms are marked for subject-affectedness while the active ones are not so marked.
I'm beginning to think that a case can be made for the logic of the linkage of ἔρχεσθαι and ἐλθεῖν -- that the second-aorist ἐλθεῖν may indeed bear middle-marking of a sort not unrelated to a future-tense ἐλεύσομαι and a second-perfect ἐλήλουθα (that's the older form of ἐλήλυθα).

For two years now I have been mulling over a discussion focusing on this very problem. It’s in a volume published in 1969 titled, “Oppositions of voice in Greek, Slavic and Baltic” by a Danish linguist, Herman Kølln. It was called to my attention by Peter Gentry of SBTL in Louisville, KY. The volume is not readily accessible, but Peter sent me a PDF of the relevant portion ; it’s a large 4.2MB file, which I’ve posted on my web-site at http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/docs/HK-Voice.pdf

Here are the questions I’ve been pondering and my thinking about likely answers:
Dionysius Thrax wrote:διαθέσεις εἰσὶ τρεῖς, ἐνέργεια, πάθος, μεσότης· ἐνέργεια μὲν οἷον τύπτω, πάθος δὲ οἷον τύπτομαι, μεσότης δὲ ἡ ποτὲ μὲν ἐνέργειαν ποτὲ δὲ πάθος παριστᾶσα, οἷον πέπηγα διέφθορα ἐποιησάμην ἐγραψάμην.
I read DT as meaning that there are two fundamental “dispositions” of the Greek verb, that by ἐνέργεια he means the active set of inflections, by πάθος he means the middle-passive set of inflections, and by μεσότης he is referring to verbs that display (παρίστᾶσιν) an active form in one or more tense, and a middle-passive form in one or more other tenses. I know that this has been interpreted to mean that DT is espousing a doctrine of “deponency”, but that assumes that πάθος refers to passive voice. I note that DT’s illustrative forms do not involve θη forms at all — and I have a bit of a suspicion that he just may consider the θη forms as a variety of active aorists — i.e. I suspect that he may lump together all of the aorist forms conjugated with ην/ης/η κτλ. (athematic second aorist active, first passives in -θην and second passives in -ην) as active forms.

If that’s right, let’s note that πέπηγα and διέφθορα are second perfect forms meaning “I’m stuck fast” and “I’m ruined” — they bear middle-passive meanings and their proper present-tense forms should be πήγνυμαι and διαφθείρομαι. Of course these verbs have active forms (πήγνυμι “fasten” and διαφθείρω “render useless”), but the thing to note is that the active form in the perfect tense carries a middle-passive meaning. And that’s true of other second perfect verbs, eg. γέγονα from γίνομαι and πέποιθα from πείθομαι. And there are others. My guess is that the “second perfect” forms antedate the emergence of the later regular perfect tenses conjugated with κα/κας/κε endings. Perhaps they are remnants of an era when a full set of perfect middle-passive endings in μαι/σαι/ται had not yet become standard.

And if that guess is right, then might the same hold true for the athematic second aorists in ην/ης/η? Those verbs are, I think, intransitive generally and also, I think, they carry middle-passive meaning. The θην/θης/θη inflection seems to have emerged as a standard pattern for these verbs with middle-passive meaning. Moreover, the ην/ης/η and θην/θης/θη middle-passive aorist forms contrast nicely with the first aorist forms in σα/σας/σε which are, by and large, semantically active: Consider the pair ἔβη “he strode” and ἔβησε “he made to walk” or the pair ἔστη “he stood/stood still” and ἔστησε “he established, made to stand.”

These thoughts have finally brought into focus for me the arguments set forth by Herman Kølln in the monograph cited above What Kølln argues is that all second aorist verbs bearing active endings are marked for subject-affectedness. All second-aorist verbs — both the thematic verbs of the type εἶδον and εἶπον and ἦλθον and the athematic verbs of the type ἐπάγην (from πήγνυμαι) and ἐφθάρην (from φθείρομαι) and ἐφάνην (from φαίνομαι).
It would appear that active aorists in σα/σας/σε with transitive active semantic force may have formed a very useful polarity with intransitive middle-passive aorists with passive semantic force. Cf. Egbert Bakker, “Voice, Aspect and Aktionsart: Middle and Passive in Ancient Greek” in Barbara A. Fox, Paul J. Hopper, edd., Voice: Form and function (Typological Studies in Language 27) (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1994), pp. 23-47.

More “what if …?” questions come to a mind that’s always enjoyed poking around in the archaeology of the Greek verb without having any adequate training for the task:

1. Might there have been a time when middle-passive endings had not yet developed, when aorist forms with “active” endings in σα/σας/σε marked verbs with active causative meaning, while aorist forms with “active” endings in ον/ες/ε or ην/ης/η marked verbs with middle or passive meaning?

and

2. Might the emergence/invention of middle-passive inflection have begun with the addition of -αι to the basic personal endings of the Greek verb, namely μ/σ/(τ)? Or perhaps that began with the emergence/invention of middle-passive endings in the aorist with the addition of -ην to the first-person μ and o to the second- and third-person endings ς and τ, yielding the sequence μην, σο, το, κτλ. and afterwards the perhaps the primary middle-passive forms emerged or were invented by inserting an α between μ and ι in μι/σι/τι … ντι?

3. Another of the “mysteries” of mismatched voice-forms is that of present-tense “active” verbs with future-tense “middle” forms. There aren’t many of these, but unless I’m mistaken (always a strong possibility), they fall into a pattern of this sort: even if their present-tense form is active, they are verbs that do seem to bear subject-affected meaning, they have middle future-tense forms and second-aorist active forms (e.g. λαμβάνω, λήψομαι, ἔλαβον; μανθάνω, μαθήσομαι, ἔμαθον; βαίνω, βήσομαι, ἔβην; γινώσκω, γνώσομαι, ἔγνων).

And that’s my can of worms. The big question: is the difference between the sigmatic aorist on the one hand and the thematic and athematic aorists on the other a difference somehow linked to the distinction between transitive active verbs and intransitive verbs that are marked for subject-affectedness? Closely related to that question is whether first-perfect and second-perfect tenses differ in the same manner — second-perfect forms are intransitive and marked for subject-affectedness? And lastly, are those verbs with future-tense middle forms linked to present-tense active forms basically subject-affected verbs?

Anyone want to play in my sandbox?
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
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Re: Greek Voice: Unresolved Questions (a can of worms)

Post by Stephen Carlson »

Intriguing suggestions. I've only briefly scanned Kølln at this point. My impression is that there is something interesting going on but I'm not sure that the ancient system of diathesis that Kølln is finding maps all that cleanly onto the classical active-middle voice system.

What are your thoughts about the subject affected-ness of the following verbs with second aorists. like:
  • τίτκτω (2 aor. ἔτεκον), "I give birth"
  • βάλλω (2 aor. ἔβαλον), "I throw" {NB: Kølln rather lamely distinguishes this as not indicating "an effective action in the truest sense".}
  • ἄγω (2 redup. aor. ἤγαγον) "I lead") {but Kølln considers reduplicated aorists to be different from his "strong aorists"}
  • θείνω (2 redup. aor. ἔπεφνον, aor. inf. θενεῖν), "I slay" {Though the indicative is reduplicated, the other moods for this aorist are thematic, if I read LSJ right).
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Re: Greek Voice: Unresolved Questions (a can of worms)

Post by MAubrey »

I think I've expressed this before, Carl, but I am of the view that the reason for the middle-only futures and active-only aorists is a result of transitivity--not in regular sense of 'a verb that takes an object,' but rather in the scalar sense laided out by Hopper & Thompson (1980) which I've shared with you before and in the more up-to-date approach delineated in Åshild Næss' (2007) monograph, Prototypical transitivity.

http://www.romanistik.uni-freiburg.de/r ... ompson.pdf
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Re: Greek Voice: Unresolved Questions (a can of worms)

Post by cwconrad »

Stephen Carlson wrote:Intriguing suggestions. I've only briefly scanned Kølln at this point. My impression is that there is something interesting going on but I'm not sure that the ancient system of diathesis that Kølln is finding maps all that cleanly onto the classical active-middle voice system.

What are your thoughts about the subject affected-ness of the following verbs with second aorists. like:
  • τίτκτω (2 aor. ἔτεκον), "I give birth"
  • βάλλω (2 aor. ἔβαλον), "I throw" {NB: Kølln rather lamely distinguishes this as not indicating "an effective action in the truest sense".}
  • ἄγω (2 redup. aor. ἤγαγον) "I lead") {but Kølln considers reduplicated aorists to be different from his "strong aorists"}
  • θείνω (2 redup. aor. ἔπεφνον, aor. inf. θενεῖν), "I slay" {Though the indicative is reduplicated, the other moods for this aorist are thematic, if I read LSJ right).
Yes, these hardly seem to fill the bill. Kølln is discussing Homeric material primarily. Intriguing is the right word; much of what he has to say does seem to point where he wants to go, but it's not wholly convincing.

If my subject-header didn't make it clear, I should note that I'm raising questions here rather than pointing to any definitive answers. The only point I feel pretty confident about at this point is that there's a real polarity between sigmatic (generally transitive) and athematic (generally intransitive second-aorists. But I also think there's some significant linkage between the intransitive athematic second-aorists and the intransitive second-perfects. I'm just not sure yet whether it can be fully explained.
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
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Re: Greek Voice: Unresolved Questions (a can of worms)

Post by cwconrad »

MAubrey wrote:I think I've expressed this before, Carl, but I am of the view that the reason for the middle-only futures and active-only aorists is a result of transitivity--not in regular sense of 'a verb that takes an object,' but rather in the scalar sense laided out by Hopper & Thompson (1980) which I've shared with you before and in the more up-to-date approach delineated in Åshild Næss' (2007) monograph, Prototypical transitivity.

http://www.romanistik.uni-freiburg.de/r ... ompson.pdf
Mike, you did indeed point me to the Hopper-Thompson item -- and this is a 5M PDF file rather than the 20M PDF file of the same item that I got earlier --, but I don't recall that you said anything specific previously about the future middle verb-forms. Thanks.
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
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Re: Greek Voice: Unresolved Questions (a can of worms)

Post by Paul-Nitz »

Since you called it a sandbox, I'll consider this youngster (in understanding) invited.

The future ἑαυτική (middle-passive) makes sense to me. ἐσθίω / φάγομαι If I am eating, I’m just eating. It’s a plain fact. I'm not intending. I'm not involved or "subject-affected" in any special sense. If I am going to eat, there is more self-involvement and intent. Thus the natural choice is ἑαυτική. The same sort of reasoning works, in my mind, for the other verbs with which I’m most familiar:

  • πίνω / πίομαι; λαμβανω / λήμψομαι;
    κλαίω / κλαύσομαι; χαίρω / χαιρήσομαι;
    γινώσκω / γνώσομαι; οἶδα / εἴσομαι;
    βλέπω / ὄψομαι; εἰμί / ἔσομαι


This reasoning work for me with the following verbs, too:

  • Walk...βαινω - βησομαι, Shout...βῶ - βοήσομαι, Get by lot... λαγχάνω - λήξομαι, See...ορῶ - ὄψομαι, Suffer...πάσχω - πείσομαι, Fall... πίπτω - πεσοῦμαι, Be silent...σιγῶ - σιγήσομαι, Run...τρέχω - δραμοῦμαι,

    But two verbs stump me, perhaps because I'm just not friends with them yet:
    Happen to be... τυγχάνω - τεύξομαι, Anticipate...φθάνω - φθήσομαι.
    (List from Juan Coderch's "Classical Greek: A New Grammar" section 182)

How many other verbs are like this ἔρχομαι / ἦλθον with the εσθαι pattern in the present and the ειν pattern in the Aorist?
I could see this single anomaly explained in two ways.

  • 1. We have two different words. Yes, they have the same meaning and so we call them one verb. But they are certainly not the same collection of letters, not even a changed root, like λαμβαν λαβ. One came from a εσθαι pattern word and the other from an ειν pattern word. I like to think that ερχ had a more παρατατική sense to the base meaning and so didn’t match well with trying to stuff it in the Aorist. The other, ελθ, vice versa.

    2. ερχόμεθα... When we are “moving ourselves” (which I take to be a much better definition of ερχεσθαι than ‘come/go’) the ἑαυτική idea is self-evident. ἤλθομεν... When we have already moved ourselves and we’re talking about the action as completed and over with, the subject-affectedness drops away. But if we’re picturing ourselves in the midst of the action, the ἑαυτική slips back in… ἀπηρχόμεθα.


Maybe all this is just my brain's contortions to make sense of something. I've been guilty of it before and will be again,

at least as long as I am married.
Paul D. Nitz - Lilongwe Malawi
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Re: Greek Voice: Unresolved Questions (a can of worms)

Post by Stephen Carlson »

OK, on to the "what if questions":
cwconrad wrote:1. Might there have been a time when middle-passive endings had not yet developed, when aorist forms with “active” endings in σα/σας/σε marked verbs with active causative meaning, while aorist forms with “active” endings in ον/ες/ε or ην/ης/η marked verbs with middle or passive meaning?
While I won't exactly that the active endings marked verbs with middle or passive meanings (if anything, they didn't mark voice at all), yes, it's my sense that the full development of the voice system was a Greek phenomenon, already begun in the language of Homer and come to fruition by classical Attic. So there was a time when the middle endings were not fully developed or productively extended to almost all verbs. Many of the actives, particularly in the older formations (not the younger sigmatic aorist) could support either of the (later) voices. This was especially true for the (second) perfects, but it is also seen in the so-called third aorists.

There does seem to be a first-aorist contrast with the third-aorist, between causative and intransitive respectively. Whether that's a close to the original meaning of the sigmatic aorist requires more research. Bridget Drinka has shown that, while the sigmatic aorist has root in Indo-European, its productivity in Greek (and Sanskrit) is a much later phenomenon.

cwconrad wrote:2. Might the emergence/invention of middle-passive inflection have begun with the addition of -αι to the basic personal endings of the Greek verb, namely μ/σ/(τ)? Or perhaps that began with the emergence/invention of middle-passive endings in the aorist with the addition of -ην to the first-person μ and o to the second- and third-person endings ς and τ, yielding the sequence μην, σο, το, κτλ. and afterwards the perhaps the primary middle-passive forms emerged or were invented by inserting an α between μ and ι in μι/σι/τι … ντι?
According to the evidence of Mycenaean Greek, the original -μαι, -σαι, -ται, -νται endings were -μοι, -σοι, -τοι, and -ντοι. These primary middle endings look a lot like the secondary middle endings in -σο, -το, -ντο (the -μην / -μᾱν ending is further developed), plus the -ι suffix that marks the present, as we see among the athematic endings. So, the thinking is that that the suffixed -o represents some kind of a middle marker, which was added to the active (or more properly "eventive" as this stage) endings. The speculation is that this middle marker in -ο-comes over the stative conjugation that is also the source of the perfect, but this all so confusing to me.
cwconrad wrote:3. Another of the “mysteries” of mismatched voice-forms is that of present-tense “active” verbs with future-tense “middle” forms. There aren’t many of these, but unless I’m mistaken (always a strong possibility), they fall into a pattern of this sort: even if their present-tense form is active, they are verbs that do seem to bear subject-affected meaning, they have middle future-tense forms and second-aorist active forms (e.g. λαμβάνω, λήψομαι, ἔλαβον; μανθάνω, μαθήσομαι, ἔμαθον; βαίνω, βήσομαι, ἔβην; γινώσκω, γνώσομαι, ἔγνων).
Yeah, I understand these diachronically, in that the future tense is younger than the middle voice, so by the time the future was being created the subject-affectedness of the verbs naturally attracted the middle endings.

There are some additional wrinkles. One is that the future ending in -σομαι may just be a desiderative suffix, meaning "I want to" which was later generalized to a future. We also have pairs like ἔφαγον / φάγομαι and ἔπιον / πίομαι, where not only does the future have primary endings (and thus non-past) but also that the endings are middle.
cwconrad wrote:And that’s my can of worms. The big question: is the difference between the sigmatic aorist on the one hand and the thematic and athematic aorists on the other a difference somehow linked to the distinction between transitive active verbs and intransitive verbs that are marked for subject-affectedness? Closely related to that question is whether first-perfect and second-perfect tenses differ in the same manner — second-perfect forms are intransitive and marked for subject-affectedness? And lastly, are those verbs with future-tense middle forms linked to present-tense active forms basically subject-affected verbs?
Under certain conditions, the sigmatic aorist looks like a causative. The old second and third aorists may simply be unmarked for voice. Kølln seems to think that reduplicated aorists are special, so we probably need to bracket them off and consider them separately. I've been fascination about the role of the thematic vowel in the Greek verbal conjugation, and Kølln's speculations seem intriguing to me. Well, I've read worse speculation at least.

As for the second perfects, I wonder if we need to treat them separately from the first perfects and aspirated second perfects. Are they even perfect or something else entirely, like a special voice?
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Re: Greek Voice: Unresolved Questions (a can of worms)

Post by cwconrad »

Paul-Nitz wrote:Since you called it a sandbox, I'll consider this youngster (in understanding) invited.

The future ἑαυτική (middle-passive) makes sense to me. ἐσθίω / φάγομαι If I am eating, I’m just eating. It’s a plain fact. I'm not intending. I'm not involved or "subject-affected" in any special sense. If I am going to eat, there is more self-involvement and intent. Thus the natural choice is ἑαυτική. The same sort of reasoning works, in my mind, for the other verbs with which I’m most familiar:

  • πίνω / πίομαι; λαμβανω / λήμψομαι;
    κλαίω / κλαύσομαι; χαίρω / χαιρήσομαι;
    γινώσκω / γνώσομαι; οἶδα / εἴσομαι;
    βλέπω / ὄψομαι; εἰμί / ἔσομαι
Add: πίνω/πίομαι/ἔπιον but πώπωκα
λαμβάνω/λή(μ)ψομαι/ἔλαβον/εἴληφα
χαίρω/χαροῦμαι/ἐχάρην/Ep. pf. κεχάρεα
γι(γ)νώσκω/γνώσομαι/ἔγνων but ἔγνωκα
οἶδα/εἴσομαι are properly speaking pf., fut.pf.
βλέπω/ὄψομαι/εἶδον/ὄπωπα
As for εἰμί/ἔσομαι, I find it fascinating that this verb gradually shifts wholly into the middle in the curse of the history of Greek: to εἶμαι/ἔσομαι/ἤμην
This reasoning work for me with the following verbs, too:
  • Walk...βαινω - βησομαι, Shout...βῶ - βοήσομαι, Get by lot... λαγχάνω - λήξομαι, See...ορῶ - ὄψομαι, Suffer...πάσχω - πείσομαι, Fall... πίπτω - πεσοῦμαι, Be silent...σιγῶ - σιγήσομαι, Run...τρέχω - δραμοῦμαι,
Add βαίνω/βήσομαι/ἔβην/Homeric pf. βέβαα
λαγχάνω/λήξομαι/ἔλαχον/εἴληχα
πάσχω/πείσομαι/ἔπαθον/πέπονθα (root: πενθ/πονθ/παθ)
πίπτω/πεσοῦμαι/ἔπεσον/Homeric pf. πέπτηα
τρέχω/δραμοῦμαι/ἔδραμον/Homeric pf. δέδρομα
But two verbs stump me, perhaps because I'm just not friends with them yet:
Happen to be... τυγχάνω - τεύξομαι, Anticipate...φθάνω - φθήσομαι.
(List from Juan Coderch's "Classical Greek: A New Grammar" section 182)[/list]
How many other verbs are like this ἔρχομαι / ἦλθον with the εσθαι pattern in the present and the ειν pattern in the Aorist?

Add τυγχάνω/τεύξομαι/ἔτυχον/older pf. τετύχηα
φθάνω/φθήσομαι/ἔφθην/but pf. ἔφθακα\
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
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