Stephen Carlson wrote:It's been a long day. They basically restated their positions already in print, with some back and forth. In the question period, Randall Buth stood up and asked a question about how to say "I am standing" in Greek but was not allowed to follow up, so the point was lost.
Only Fanning had a handout. It includes some citations. They may be worth looking at.
I knew that would happen. I had low expectations--a big reason why I didn't come this year. If they wanted something useful they should have asked speakers who had not already produced published monographs on the subject. Rutger Allan regurgitated his monograph on Middle Voice last year. When the scholars involved haven't done anything new, I don't see how it could have gone any differently..
RandallButh wrote:{+perfective, followed with a +imperfective}
This was my preferred view until I began looking at grammatical contrasts between present middles and perfect middles. It sounds reasonable when contrasting present and perfect actives. It's a harder point to make with middles. Only the present middles will be imperfective. The perfects will be purely existential--no internal temporal constituency. Consider, for example: γέγραπται, 'it is written,' vs. γράφεται, 'it is being written.'
RandallButh wrote:...though I asked Campbell to produce one example of his ἵστημι from anywhere in the Greek language. (Who knows, maybe a Homeric poem or Pindarian poem has an example(?), the solitude of which, if it exists, would only more forcibly underline that a Greek speaker was constrained to use ἕστηκα.)
Well said.
There are certainly no Homeric-era instances of ἵστημι with that meaning, whether in Homer, Hesiod, or the Homeric Hymns. I've done a complete search of this verb in those texts. I haven't checked all Classical occurrences, but I've examined specific authors comprehensively. The Koine and Byzantine are the same. ἵστημι can't mean "I am standing." On the other hand, someone could have perhaps said: ἵσταμαι, which eventually replaces ἕστηκα entirely in another 400 years or so. I could also possibly seen ἔστην as having that meaning in the right context, maybe in Homer, since it allows both causative and non-causative senses. Maybe here...
Homer, Iliad 17.29–32 wrote:
29 ὥς θην καὶ σὸν ἐγὼ λύσω μένος εἴ κέ μευ ἄντα
30 στήῃς· ἀλλά σ᾽ ἔγωγ᾽ ἀναχωρήσαντα κελεύω
31 ἐς πληθὺν ἰέναι, μηδ᾽ ἀντίος ἵστασ᾽ ἐμεῖο
32 πρίν τι κακὸν παθέειν·
But the conditional certainly complicates the situation. I cannot see the aorist being used as a simple answer to the question: "What are you dong." That would certainly be a ἕστηκα.