Middle and Passive
Iver Larsen
iver_larsen at sil.org
Tue Dec 10 03:13:40 EST 2002
Hi, Peter,
Welcome to the list. You ask some good questions. If you have not already
done so, I encourage you to study Carl's paper which can be downloaded in
pdf form from www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/Docs (I would have preferred a WORD
format, since the PDF format is not so easy to read on my little laptop
screen.)
You may also find it useful to review the discussions from last year
(October-November) about middle and passive. From your Hebrew background,
you may especially appreciate Trevor Peterson's post of Oct. 27, 2001. He
suggested that it would be more helpful to operate with Greek verb stems
like in Semitic. He suggested the following three names: G (Grundstamme),
which is equivalent to Carl's Basic form/stem, M for the -mai etc. endings,
and H for the -QH/-H etc endings. Carl prefers to link the traditional
middle and passive forms closely together, partly for historical reasons,
and calls them both MP. When a distinction is needed, the M could be called
MP1 and the H could be MP2. Personally, I prefer the one-letter codes
suggested by Trevor. The advantage of this system is that it helps
us/students of Greek not to link the Greek G and H stems with the English
active and passive, respectively, and then having the middle floating around
helplessly.
>
> Steven makes a good point that the issue should be examined on the basis
> of the Greek use of the passive rather than the English one. But there
> is also a danger of tautology in this argument: the Greek "passive"
> forms with -QH- are used as the Greek passive is used, by definition. To
> put it another way, if a -QH- "passive" is used in a Greek text, it must
> be acceptable Greek idiom, but that doesn't tell us what it means. The
> real question which must be answered is, how does the Greek use of the
> -QH- "passive" differ from the normal or canonical use of the passive as
> recognised by linguists - which is very likely based on English or Latin
> usage but is not defined as the English usage. If there is any such
> difference, it is relevant not only for translation but also for proper
> understanding of the Greek text.
It differs so much that it is not very helpful to call the Greek H stem
passive.
> The question seems to be a rather simple one. In English (mentioned only
> for comparison purposes) we can write:
>
> 1. X hit Y
> 2. (Y hit Y) => Y hit him/herself
> 3. Y was hit by X
> 4. Y was hit
>
> Does 4. exclude the possibility that Y hit him/herself? That is
> debatable. I don't think it would ever be used where the agent is known,
> but possibly where the agent is unknown e.g. a police report "Y was shot
> in the head" would not be taken as ruling out suicide.
>
> Similarly in Greek (and assuming an aorist or future verb) we have the
> four equivalent possibilities, active with direct object, active with
> hEAUTON/-HN, -QH- "passive" with expressed agent, and -QH- "passive"
> with no expressed agent; plus a distinct middle form. The question we
> must ask is, does the Greek version of 4. exclude the possibility that Y
> hit him/herself? It seems unlikely to do so completely. But does it
> allow this possibility more freely than the English form e.g. even in
> cases where the agency is known to be reflexive? This is surely
> something which we can test unambiguously, and in theologically
> uncontroversial texts, within the New Testament and the wider corpus of
> Hellenistic literature.
IMO, the function of the G, M and H stems in Greek needs to be looked at in
the context of a semantic categorization of the Greek verbs. One such
categorization was listed in Carl's message of Oct 18, 2001, and included in
the recent paper.
A verb like "hit" is likely to use a reflexive and occur in a derived
passive sense. If it occurs in the middle sense at all, it is likely to be
quite different in sense than the middle sense of a verb in another semantic
category.
> Some examples which we might need to consider, where there doesn't
> appear to be a separate agent, and these are just from Matthew (I have
> excluded well known deponent forms, also my simple search for *QH* omits
> some forms e.g. participles):
>
> 11:6 cf. 15:12, 24:10, 26:31,33 SKANDALISQH (or does EN EMOI mark the
> agent? - but then "be offended" in English doesn't require an agent)
This is nice example of a verb that belongs in a category that is basically
middle in sense. "Stumble" or "fall into sin" is an event where the
undergoer or experiencer of the event is in focus, and there is no separate
agent. In such verbs, the G stem (active) functions as a causative "cause to
stumble". I would say that EN EMOI is not the agent. It is more likely the
trigger, and not really the cause, since the G stem would be used for
causation.
> 12:26 EMERISQH
Also a nice example. It occurs 5 times in the GNT in its G form which
semantically is a trivalent unit with three roles: divide(A,P,B).
Grammatically, we have a subject, object and indirect object in the
corresponding cases nom., acc. and dative.
The verb occurs once in the M form (Lk 12:13) which semantically I would
describe as a unit with two roles: divide(A=B,P). The agents(s) and the
beneficiaries/receivers are the same, so it may also be termed reciprocal.
The context of Lk 12:13 is the complaint that one brother has made himself
both the agent and the recipient, whereas the other brother wants to be
included as a recipient. Grammatically it has a subject and object in nom.
and acc.
Then, the verb occurs 8 times in the H form with a semantic description of
one role: divide(P).
> 13:2, 22:34, 26:3,57, 27:62 SUNHCQHSAN and especially 24:28
> SUNACQHSONTAI
This verb is also basically middle in sense: come together(A=P) with one
semantic role which occurs grammatically as subject in nominative.
There are 30 occurrences of this verb in the MP form in the GNT. There is no
difference whatsoever in meaning between the M stem and the H stem, and the
meaning is not passive in any of these forms, but reciprocal or inclusive.
The agent(s) and the undergoers belong together in the same group and they
act upon themselves or one another. It is matter of morphology that of these
30 MP forms, 3 occur in the present tense and therefore take the M stem as
do the 7 perfect forms. 18 forms are in aorist and therefore use the H stem,
whereas 2 are future and also use the H stem. When I looked at the English
glosses of the aorist forms of this verb, the confusion was apparent.
Sometimes the verb was glossed "assembled" or "gathered", sometimes "were
assembled" or "were gathered." This is very inconsistent and reflects the
problem of the traditional understanding of such forms as passive. All the
MP forms were marked as P(assive) in the Friberg tags, which is also not
helpful. It would be much better to mark the stem as M and P, or MP1 and
MP2.
The G forms of this verb are causative with two semantic roles: cause to
come together(C,P). (I use C for cause, but it can be subsumed under agent.)
There are 29 instances in the GNT, and grammatically they are constructed
with a subject and an object, which may be implied.
> 17:23, 18:31 ELUPHQHSAN
LUPEW is similar, that is, basically middle in sense: grieve(E), a verb with
one role which I call experiencer, since it is in between agent and patient,
but it could be subsumed under patient. Again, there is no meaning
difference between the M and H stems for this verb. Of the 29 instances, 9
happen to use the M stem because they are present, and 11 use the H stem
because they are aorist or future.
The G stem is causative: cause to grieve(C/A,E). This form occurs 6 times.
> 18:12 PLANHQH
PLANAW has 19 G forms in the GNT which can be understood either as:
deceive(A,P/E) or as: cause to go astray (C,P/E). The 20 MP forms I would
see as middle in sense, that is, go astray (A=P/E). For some of these, the
context may indicate that there was an external agent or cause for the going
astray, but this is not shown by the choice of H over M stem. No aorist or
future M form is used, so it seems that the H stem is chosen when the tense
is aorist or future, and the M stem otherwise.
> 19:5 KOLLHQHSETAI
This is semantically a divalent verb with two roles: cling to(A=E/P,B) which
grammatically is constructed with a subject and an indirect object in
dative. The action of clinging to is performed on oneself, and therefore is
naturally an MP form. As with most of the other verbs mentioned, all aorist
and future tense forms use H stems, and the other tenses use the M stem.
This does not mean that there is any difference in meaning between the H and
M stems.
There are no G forms of this verb in the GNT, but one could conceive of a
verb "cause to join" which would then use the G form.
> 21:10 ESEISQH
SEISW seems to be basically an active verb: shake(A,P).
The one M form and the three H forms seems to have a passive sense in that
there is a clear external agent or cause. Again, that sense is not
determined by the use of H over against M, but is based on the nature of the
semantic roles and semantic content of the verb. The M form in Rev 6:13 is
more clearly passive than most of the H forms.
> 25:7 HGERQHSAN
EGEIRW has been discussed earlier at considerable length.
Thanks, Peter, for the question and examples. As I work through this, I lean
more and more towards adopting the stem notation, although I would prefer A
for G to show the active/basic stem, i.e., I would operate with A, M, and H
stems. For some verbs the M stem is semantically more basic than the A stem,
even if not so morphologically.
Iver Larsen
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