hHUREQHN (was RE: Romans 10:20)
Iver Larsen
iver_larsen at sil.org
Wed Dec 4 12:24:08 EST 2002
Thanks, Carl, for your added comments.
Let me just make a few comments interspersed below:
> Then I guess that you'll also uphold the traditional category of deponent
> verbs. EGEIRW is not normally considered a "deponent" verb, but it behaves
> like one in several ways. I suppose you'll say that
> EGEIRW/EGEIROMAI/HGERQHN is a transitive verb because in the active it CAN
> take a direct object when it has the sense, "awaken" (or "raise from the
> dead"). Yet the "active" imperative (so tagged in Accordance) appears 15x
> in the GNT in the sense, "arise." The middle EGEIROMAI is well enough
> attested outside the GNT but doesn't appear in the GNT at all,
> according to
> Accordance, which shows 86 "passive" forms--20 in the present tense
> (including 3 instances of EGEIRESQE--Mt. 26:46; Mk 14:42; Jn
> 14:31--followed by AGWMEN, clearly in the sense, "Get up, let's go!"), 11
> in the perfect tense, all others in the -QH- future and aorist
> tense-forms.
> Would you believe that BDAG refers to the sense "awake" or
> "arise" or "rise
> from the dead" in these instances as a "passive intransitive"?
No, I do not want to uphold the "deponent" term. I agree with you that this
is not a helpful description at all.
Actually, I don't think that the terms transitive or intransitive tell us
much about the function of Greek verbs. These are syntactic terms that are
not important. I find it more interesting to describe these verbs in terms
of semantic roles. For instance, EGEIRW can have two semantic roles, agent
or "causer" and experiencer. To "raise" is like "cause to stand up" and
involves an agent/cause that is different from the experiencer/undergoer.
When the two roles refer to the same person we get "stand up/rise/get up".
This situation is close to the reflexive idea and in some languages may best
be expressed as reflexive. I would expect the Greek middle to be used for
this sense, but sometimes the active is apparently used for this particular
verb. When there is strong focus on the experiencer and the agent/cause is
completely suppressed, the passive form can be used.
I am not convinced that we can propose a description of the middle that will
work the same way for all verbs. Some verbal ideas lend themselves to the
middle being very similar to the active in sense, while in others, the
middle is very close to the passive in sense. For some verbs, the MP forms
are close to a reflexive sense, for other verbs, this may not be the case.
>
> The fact is that I don't think it's very useful to speak of "passive
> intransitive" either. What I do think is that we ought to distinguish
> between designations of the morphoparadigms and the semantic roles of
> verbs. I object to the designation of the -QH- forms as "passive" because
> (a) quite frequently such forms are NOT at all passive in meaning, and (b)
> to call such -QH- forms "deponent" when they don't perform a passive
> semantic role suggests that they are somehow irregular, when they are
> actually numerous and quite regular, even if they don't have
> "active" forms
> (although EGEIRW certainly does have one, which is why, I guess, it hasn't
> been labeled a "deponent" verb.
>
> You don't like the term "subject-focused." Well, perhaps a better term may
> yet be invented, but it seems to me that it does characterize the way that
> both the traditional "middle-passive" and the traditional -QH- "passive"
> morphoparadigms function in distinction from the traditional "active"
> morphoparadigms. In §§7 of my latest "New Observations" I've suggested
> "Basic" and "Subject-focused" as descriptive terms for the traditional
> "Active" and the traditional "Middle-passive" and "passive"
> morphoparadigms
> respectively, but in order to retain some continuity with traditional
> terminology, I've suggested that we continue to use the term "active" for
> the traditional "active" morphoparadigms while designating the traditional
> "middle-passive" morphoparadigms as MP1 and the traditional "passive"
> morphoparadigms as MP2.
I would be happy to adopt "basic" and "MP", which may be further specified
as "MP1" or "MP2" when needed. The reason I am not too happy with
"subject-focused" is that "subject" is a syntactical term that is usually
linked to the semantic agent. It seems to me that the MP forms are more
recipient-focused than subject-focused. The agent is often suppressed or out
of focus in an MP form. This is in accordance with your examples of having
one's hair cut below.
>
> What has impressed itself upon me in the course of my study of the middle
> and passive morphoparadigms and voice functions of the Greek verbs is that
> the categories in terms of which traditional grammar has described it--and
> perhaps those into which scientific linguistics seems to want to force it
> to fit--, don't seem to apply very well to the way the language
> works/worked. We have wanted to see the Middle voice as a sort of half-way
> house between a fundamental polarity of Active and Passive, whereas it
> seems to me that the fundamental polarity of voice in Greek voice FORMS is
> of unmarked "Basic" forms, most of which are what we would properly call
> Active, but many of which are decidedly not so, and marked
> "Subject-focused" forms which generally describe an action in which the
> subject is deeply involved or a transition which the subject is undergoing
> or experiencing--or suffering or being subjected to. When informed by
> historical linguistics that proto-Indo-European had no true passive but
> used what is called "medio-passive" to express both "Middle" and "Passive"
> functions and that this is also true of the earliest Greek, I began to
> wonder whether passive function wasn't ALWAYS in ancient Greek just a way
> of using the "medio-passive" morphoparadigms. Thinking about the way
> reflexive verbs in modern European languages function made me increasingly
> aware that these reflexive verbs--or many of them, at least--also
> functioned not infrequently for a semantic passive function. EMOI MEN OUN
> TOUTO hEUREQH hEURHMA MEGA: In my perspective, at any rate, this presented
> itself as a huge discovery.
>
> KEIRATAI may mean "he cuts his own hair" or "he has his hair cut (by
> another)"; XURATAI may mean "he shaves himself" or "he has himself shaved
> (by another)." I don't think that the Greek psyche ordinarily thought of a
> distinction between "middle" and "passive" usage with these
> verbs; rather I
> think it is the modern translator who gets hung up on whether the
> "form" is
> Middle or Passive. KEIRATAI simply means "he gets his hair cut"
> and XURATAI
> simply means "he has a shave." If there's a need to specify who's cutting
> the hair or doing the shaving, there is a regular agent
> construction, but I
> think that to the Greek-speaker the distinction was ordinarily irrelevant.
>
> I wouldn't want to be dogmatically insistent that every GNT instance of
> hEUREQHN should be understood as intransitive or middle in function, but I
> am far from convinced that the meaning of this form is ALWAYS PASSIVE in
> sense. I called attention to the item in BDAG a few days back that there
> may be some value in calling attention to anew:
>
> hEURISKW 1.b. Pass. be found, find oneself, be (Dt 20:11; 4 Km 14:14; 1
> Esdr 1:19; 8:13; Bar 1:7; TestSol 7:6; GrBar 4:11) F. hEUREQH EIS AZWTON
> Philip found himself or was present at Azotus Ac 8:40 (cp. Esth 1:5 toiß
> EQNESIN TOIS hEUREQEISIN EIS THN POLIN; also s. 4 Km 2), on the
> other hand,
> a Semitic phrase )STKX B ...=to arrive in, or at, may underlie the expr.
> here and in hEUREQHNAI EIS THN BASILEIAN Hs 9, 13, 2 (s. MBlack, Aramaic
> Studies and the NT, JTS 49, '48, 164). OUDE TOPOS hEUREQH AUTWN ETI EN TWi
> OURANWi there was no longer any place for them in heaven Rv 12:8 (s. Da
> 2:35 Theod.); cp. 18:22, 24. OUDE hEUREQH DOLOS EN TWi STOMATI AUTOU 1 Pt
> 2:22; 1 Cl 16:10 (both Is 53:9); cp. Rv 14:5 (cp. Zeph 3:13). hINA hEUREQW
> EN AUTWi (i.e. CRISTWi) that I might be found in Christ Phil 3:9
> (JMoffatt,
> ET 24, 1913, 46).
I think some of these translations are questionable. In Ac 8:40 we might as
well say "Philip was seen/discovered in Azotus" (by unspecified people.) It
is equivalent in sense to "he appeared in Azotus", but making it reflexive
is not necessary for this verb, IMO.
Iver Larsen
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