ἔρχομαι: pres mp ptcp, aor act ptcp
Posted: March 19th, 2016, 5:55 pm
According to katabiblon.com, ἔρχομαι is always middle for a present participle, and always active for an aorist participle.
Why?
Why?
ibiblio.org/bgreek/forum/
https://www.ibiblio.org:443/bgreek/forum/
https://www.ibiblio.org:443/bgreek/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=3630
There are several things to bear in mind when thinking about this.Jonathan Robie wrote:According to katabiblon.com, ἔρχομαι is always middle for a present participle, and always active for an aorist participle.
Why?
Not just participles but in all the moods (sensu lato). This is a case where the aspectual suppletion (different present and aorist stems) also involves a difference in voice.Jonathan Robie wrote:According to katabiblon.com, ἔρχομαι is always middle for a present participle, and always active for an aorist participle.
Why?
Which in turn is probably tied to the scalar nature of transitivity.Stephen Carlson wrote:Not just participles but in all the moods (sensu lato). This is a case where the aspectual suppletion (different present and aorist stems) also involves a difference in voice.Jonathan Robie wrote:According to katabiblon.com, ἔρχομαι is always middle for a present participle, and always active for an aorist participle.
Why?
Admittedly I'm dense, but I'm having difficulty understanding how "the scalar nature of transitivity" clarifies why an intransitive verb should have a middle form in the present-tense but an active form in the aorist. The forms of the future, aorist, and perfect from the ϝελευθ/ϝελουθ/ϝελυθ root are explicable in terms of Greek linguistic history and survival of forms used regularly in everyday speech: the distinctive aorist active in -σαi and perfect middle-passive in -σθαι are later developments. The middle form of the present-tense is from a different root altogether; that too is common to the very old and generally irregular Greek verbs.MAubrey wrote:Which in turn is probably tied to the scalar nature of transitivity.Stephen Carlson wrote:Not just participles but in all the moods (sensu lato). This is a case where the aspectual suppletion (different present and aorist stems) also involves a difference in voice.Jonathan Robie wrote:According to katabiblon.com, ἔρχομαι is always middle for a present participle, and always active for an aorist participle.
Why?
See: Hopper & Thompson (1980) Transitivity in Grammar and Discourse for a short version. There's a more recent study by Naess from 2007, but that's a full length monograph.
Aspect, mood, tense, and other grammatical categories affect transitivity, which perfective being more transitive than imperfective, past being more transitive than present being more transitive than future, indicative/realis being more transitive than subjunctive.cwconrad wrote:Admittedly I'm dense, but I'm having difficulty understanding how "the scalar nature of transitivity" clarifies why an intransitive verb should have a middle form in the present-tense but an active form in the aorist. The forms of the future, aorist, and perfect from the ϝελευθ/ϝελουθ/ϝελυθ root are explicable in terms of Greek linguistic history and survival of forms used regularly in everyday speech: the distinctive aorist active in -σαi and perfect middle-passive in -σθαι are later developments. The middle form of the present-tense is from a different root altogether; that too is common to the very old and generally irregular Greek verbs.
I've always wondered that, myself.cwconrad wrote:By the way, is there any conceivable link between the roots of ἄρχ-ειν/ἄρχ[-εσθαι and of ἕρχ-εσθαι?
The etymologies of both are contested and there are no good cognates, but no one to my knowledge (from Beekes) connects the two. According to some analyses, ἄρχομαι comes from * H2r-sk- "start" and ἔρχομαι from *H1r-sk-, "reach". (There are other proposals of the form *H1/2ergh.) They begin with different initial "laryngeal" consonants, which leads directly to the difference in initial vowels in Greek. Even though they otherwise resemble each other in form, the difference in initial consonants is enough not to unify them in origin especially when the semantics also requires shifts in meaning. Even this explanation probably overstates our knowledge. These are obscure verbs outside of Greek.MAubrey wrote:I've always wondered that, myself.cwconrad wrote:By the way, is there any conceivable link between the roots of ἄρχ-ειν/ἄρχ[-εσθαι and of ἕρχ-εσθαι?