Mark 1:6a

Iver Larsen iver_larsen at sil.org
Sat Dec 7 01:15:50 EST 2002


>
> Mark 1:6a
> KAI HN hO IWANNHS ENDEDUMENOS TRICAS
> KAMHLOU KAI ZWNHN DERMATINEN  PERI THN
> OSFUN AUTOU . . .
>
> The morphological information in Logos indicates that  ENDEDUMENOS is
> a passive participle.  If the participle is passive, why are TRICAS
> and ZWNEN DERMATINEN is the accusative?

Good question, Barbara. Ask those who did the Logos tags. The Friberg tags
mark it as middle, and I suppose Carl and I would prefer to mark it MP1.

Have a look at
Matt 27:31/Mk 15:20 KAI ENEDUSAN AUTON TA hIMATIA AUTOU

The basic form of this verb takes two accusatives in Greek. In semantic
terms we have "A clothes B (or E) in/with P", where A=agent (the one who
performs the action), B=beneficiary (the one who benefits from the action,
i.e. here the one who is being clothed) and P=patient (the object that
"suffers" the action, i.e. here the clothes). The "patient" role is also
called the "undergoer" because it refers to who or what undergoes the
action. These are the three basic roles, but there are several other needed
ones, such as the "experiencer" role (E). This one is somewhat in between
the agent and beneficiary role. And it is probably better to use
"experiencer" than "beneficiary" for the verb "to clothe". One reason is
that the beneficiary is normally in the dative case in Greek, whereas the
experiencer is normally accusative as with this verb.

With verbs of perception, the "agent" (the one who sees) is also better
termed the "experiencer". In this case, the agent/experiencer would be in
the nominative. When the experiencer and agent are co-referential, I would
expect a middle form of the verb in Greek. This is what occurs in Mark 1:6.
John is both the agent and the experiencer, or in other words "he has put
clothes on himself".
(This looks like a reflexive in English, but I suspect the term reflexive is
better limited to the cases where the agent is co-referential to the
patient, like in "he hit himself". I have not checked the Greek reflexives
in terms of semantic roles, and whether a true reflexive is used or a middle
form will probably also depend on the verb in question, e.g. SWZW occurs
with reflexive pronouns rather than in MP1. In any case, the term
"reflexive" is syntactic, and therefore less helpful for an understanding of
how different languages operate than semantic roles are.)

Since it is more normal in adult human behaviour that you dress yourself
than someone else is dressing you, it is to be expected that the MP1 forms
of ENDUW greatly outnumber the basic/active forms. (24 MP1 forms in the GNT,
and only three basic forms covering two situations: soldiers put the clothes
of Jesus on him, the father orders the lost son to clothed in a fine robe.
(Mt 27:31, Mark 15:20, Luke 15:22.)

There are no passives (MP2) of this verb in the GNT (acc. to Friberg tags).
This is not surprising, since the passives are semantically derivatives of
the basic/active forms which are rare. A possible passive would be "the
clothes were put back on Jesus (by the soldiers)" or "the fine robe was then
put on the lost son (by the servants)". Such constructions would put focus
on the patient (the clothes), and it would be fitting for a situation where
royal robes were transferred from one king to another, and the focus on the
royal robes as symbolic of power would be natural. In such passives the
agent is NOT co-referential with the experiencer. The agent may or may not
be supplied, in English through the use of "by" and in Greek through the use
of hUPO (sometimes EN, but I suspect that EN is used with roles other than
agent, especially experiencer.)

If I ever were to teach Greek in a classroom, I think I would consider this
verb a good one to teach the active, middle and passive distinctions.

Iver Larsen




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