Middle and Passive Aorist and Future forms

Dr. Dale M. Wheeler dalemw at multnomah.edu
Fri Dec 13 08:59:49 EST 2002


Carl W. Conrad wrote:

> >> 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?);
>
>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).

Greetings Carl:

Well, I thought I could just sit back and listen to this discussion and 
learn something...but since my name is being taken in vain...(-:

I will look at this problem with DUNAMAI again; I've looked at it in the 
past and came to the conclusion that, since both middle (fut) and passive 
(aor) forms occur, one of the two has to be chosen as the tag for the 
"deponent" forms in the Pres/Impf/Pf.  The original editor of GRAMCORD 
chose passive, and at the time (coming up on ten years ago) I looked at it, 
I couldn't see any compelling reason to change it.  However, you, and 
fixing the MorphLXX along with Bernard Taylor, have convinced me that not 
only is "deponent" an incorrect term to apply to the form/function of Greek 
verbs [except for possibly verbs which truly only can bear one voice, eg., 
ERXOMAI, viz., you can't be "goed" in English or in Greek, or German...but 
you can be in Hebrew, HLK: in the Hifil), but that middle is the overriding 
concept for these ambiguous verbs.  The 9 Aor Pass forms of DUNAMAI are 
good examples of middle meaning in a passive form (I can find no other 
reason for these things at this point than that they just sounded better to 
a Greek ear than the middle form?).  So I suspect that I'll change the 
ambiguous forms to middle...but that leaves the Aor Pass forms still tagged 
as Passive (the Morph Code: "tag only what is written, not what is meant!"; 
which of course doesn't work all the time, but its our basic starting point).

Also, you and Iver are using the terms MP1 and MP2...I must have missed an 
email...what are you referring to?

BTW, I started to convert the GRAMCORD database to "deponent this" and 
"deponent that" many moons ago, but ran into these kinds of problems and 
realized that there were some serious problems in doing that...not only in 
the conflict between form and function, but also in what is communicated to 
the user about "deponency" [as you noted above]....so I stopped.  Bernard 
and I are wrestling with this same thing in the MorphLXX right now, where 
its even worse (eg., APOKRINW occurs).  I'm not sure what the ultimate 
result will be for the MorphLXX and for the GRAMCORD MorphGNT...but I'm 
open to suggestions, since somehow the morph tags need to represent the 
form if at all possible, but when the form is ambiguous, there needs to be 
some way for users (esp., beginners in Greek) to be able to find all the 
uses without being led astray by the results.

Also, you lamented in another email that you didn't think you're research 
on this issue would effect the grammars, etc.  Well, once Bernard and I 
finally figure out how to handle this mess, your research (which long ago 
convinced me!!) will end up being reflected in the MorphLXX and 
MorphGNT...and I suspect that those texts will in fact have a long lasting 
effect on how people view this issue in Greek texts!!  I, for one, 
appreciate deeply what you've had the courage to tackle here...its not easy 
to kill the sacred cow!



***********************************************************************
Dale M. Wheeler, Ph.D.
Research Prof., Biblical Languages          Multnomah Bible College
8435 NE Glisan St.                                  Portland, OR 97220
V: 503-2516416                                 E: dalemw at multnomah.edu
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