hHUREQHN (was RE: Romans 10:20)

Iver Larsen iver_larsen at sil.org
Tue Dec 3 23:53:14 EST 2002



> Accordance too lists only one instance of hEURISKW in the middle with a
> special sense, but I hardly think that is statistically significant
> evidence that hHUREQHN is really "passive" in sense. Consider the variety
> of voice-senses of EGEIRW/EGEIROMAI/HGERQHN--not very clearly linked to
> morphoparadigms.

Yes, the argument that the MP forms of hEURISKW are almost all passive in
sense in the GNT is not based on statistics, nor on comparison to how other
verbs vary in sense. It is based on the context in which each form occurs.

Of the 32 instances of MP of hEURISKW, the context indicates that one is
middle, one is present passive, one is imperfect passive, 2 are future
passives and 27 are aorist passives. It is the context that has made both
Friberg and Accordance (I presume) tag them as such.
>
> The distinctive usage of hHUREQHN in the GNT appears to be fundamentally
> intransitive (note what BDAG said of its probable derivation from Hebrew
> usage) and is, in my now-preferred terminology, "subject-focused."

This is an unusual and IMO unhelpful use of the term "intransitive". Take an
example. The word "discover" is a transitive verb because in its active form
it can be supplied with a direct object. The passive form "it was
discovered" is derived from the active (not in a TG sense). Any language
with passives have such forms in one way or another derived from the active,
either by affixes of by auxiliary verbs. What was the object in the basic
active form becomes the subject in the passive form, and what was the
subject in the active form, is left implicit. This does not mean that the
passive form becomes "intransitive" in terms of how this word is normally
used in linguistics. The term intransitive does not apply to passive forms.
As you may remember from our earlier discussions, I do not think the term
"subject-focused" adequately describes the MP forms, whether middle or
passive. I do think that a better description will be based on semantic
roles.

Iver Larsen




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