Middle and Passive Aorist and Future forms

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Thu Dec 12 09:16:10 EST 2002


At 10:10 PM -0600 12/11/02, Paul Dixon wrote:
>On Wed, 11 Dec 2002 20:04:37 -0600 "Carl W. Conrad"
><cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu> writes:
>> At 5:59 PM -0800 12/11/02, Harry  W. Jones wrote:
>> >Well BDF says, "NT authors in general preserve well the distinction
>> between
>> >middle and passive." page 165 sec. 316.  So I wonder why people
>> want to
>> >make complicated that which is so simple.
>>
>> I certainly don't want to make complicated what is simple; what I
>> object to
>> is ignoring the complexity that is there--or put it more simply, and
>> state
>> what I really mean: I think that statements like that in BDF may
>> seem valid
>> insofar as one IGNORES the number of so-called "deponent" verb forms
>> that
>> have "middle" and "passive" morphoparadigms but are excluded from
>> classification as having the meanings of middles and passives. I now
>> have a
>> preliminary count based on analysis of all GNT -QH- "future
>> passives." I
>> had to eliminate several forms of DUNHSOMAI which were erroneously
>> tagged
>> as passive in Accordance (is there anyone who thinks the verb
>> DUNAMAI is
>> passive?); that made my total of -QHSOMAI KTL. forms 287; of these I
>> deemed
>> 167 bore probably authentic passive meaning, 120 others probably
>> authentic
>> middle meaning. I think that there are some forms on both lists that
>> could
>> be argued as belonging in the other; for some verbs I've
>> distinguished
>> instances to divided usage. Undoubtedly there will be some real
>> differences
>> of opinion over this tally, but tomorrow I'll try to find a way to
>> put up
>> the entire list and point to those verbs or verb forms that seem to
>> me most
>> ambivalent. But enough for one day already.
>
>Carl:
>
>I'm not sure how Accordance works, if you enter the parameters or if it
>is internally programmed, but I seriously doubt that 286 is any where
>near the correct total.  We started with the same or near same totals,
>but in 31 hits I considered, 9 had to be thrown out as variants of
>AKOLOUQETEIN or TIQHMI or an aorist passive.  I suspect your total
>included the same; hence, the correct total is probably closer to 200, if
>9 of 31 had to be discounted as future passive forms and if that is
>typical.

Well, of course there simply is no verb AKOLOUQETEIN, nor is there an
AKOLOUTEIN, as you spelled it previously; it's AKOLOUQEIN. As for TIQHMI,
the only futures in the GNT are in the "active" morphoparadigm, but "future
passives" of TIQHMI are found in the LXX.

Accordance works with morphologically-tagged texts, for which Dale Wheeler
is largely responsible. A few years ago he shared several toss-up forms for
opinions regarding proper voice-categorization. I have found occasional
questionable tags in Accordance, but on the whole, I think it is quite
accurate. It looks like you're searching from scratch on the basis of -QH-
within a Greek word; that procedure will of course hit on forms of
AKOLOUQEIN and TIQENAI.

In sum, I won't claim that my list of 286 is all-inclusive of MP2 forms in
the GNT, but I think it's probably pretty close to the right figure. I
appreciate Iver's note of Thu, 12 Dec 2002 08:01:28 +0300 about DUNAMAI as
tagged by Friberg: certainly DUNAMAI is correctly tagged there, provided
one is willing to use the categorization "deponent." I think it would be
more appropriate to parse the verbs in terms of morphoparadigms and
recognize that MP2 forms may be middle, passive, or even intransitive (e.g.
EPOREUQH).
-- 

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu OR cwconrad at ioa.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/



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