Middle and Passive Aorist and Future forms
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Fri Dec 13 10:10:30 EST 2002
At 5:59 AM -0800 12/13/02, Dr. Dale M. Wheeler wrote:
>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...(-:
Hardly in vain, Dale. I very much appreciate the work you've done and I
have a high regard for your scholarship--I even consult your grammar notes
in Accordance with some regularity. Certainly without your tagging work on
the GNT and to a lesser extent on the LXX (which I need to add to my data
more completely), my research wouldn't have been so manageable at all.
>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?
In my opinion, FWIW, it is best (a) to let both term and word "deponent"
die a quick and permanent death (how's that for "transitivizing" an
intransitive verb, although I guess the cognate accusative was almost
invented for that purpose); (b) to tag/parse verb-forms as such by
morphoparadigm rather than by meaning (after all, meaning is a component in
the larger tagging schemes, and meaning is something that students must
learn by careful study of lexical data or immersive reading of words in
context--what I'd call baptism by logorrhea). That is to say, if we are to
retain the designations "active," "middle-passive" and "passive"--and I
think we ought to make at least some minimal change--then we ought to be
clear about it and say up front that these terms are only markers of a
morphoparadigm: "active" means W/EIS/EI;MI/SI/TI forms etc.,
"middle-passive" means MAI/SAI/TAI;MHN/SO/TO forms, and "passive" means
-QH- aorist and future morphoparadigms.
BUT, in my view, IF we scrap the term "deponent," THEN (a) we concede that
middle and passive sense may reside in both the MAI/SAI/TAI;MHN/SO/TO and
the -QH- morphoparadigms as well, and (b) we need to designate those two
morphoparadigms distinctly in a way that doesn't distort their
potentiality; my tentative suggestion is to designate the traditional
"middle-passive" morphoparadigm as MP1 and to designate the -QH- forms as
MP2. Trevor Peterson in a post of last year (Oct. 27, 2001) suggested
designating the three morphoparadigms G (for "Grundstamme"), M (for
MAI/MHN?), and H (for the Eta resident in both First and Second Perfect
stems) respectively. While I like the single-character designations, they
really don't seem to me to be sufficiently "eindeutig"--and it is freedom
from ambiguity that is needed most of all in this area. So I've continued
to use my tentative terms MP1 and MP2 to designate the
MAI/SAI/TAI;MHN/SO/TO and -QH- morphoparadigms respectively, since both of
them can be bearers of either middle or passive sense.
>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.
Exactly. And my own concern from the outset has been pedagogical above all:
make it easier for students to learn the forms and the range of meanings
conveyed by the forms. The term "deponent verb" adds an extra strain to the
learning process and doesn't relieve the student of the task of learning
the idiosyncracies of those verbs that are in any way "irregular." Beyond
that, I think that those of us who talk about grammar could understand each
other better if we share a common lexicon--at least for the morphology we
talk about, but if possible, then also for the communicative/semantic
potentialities of the morphoparadigms.
>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!
All of this remains in an unsettled state, Dale. There is no consensus on
any alternative to the old traditional doctrines of Greek verb voice. Last
year Tim Friberg approached me and asked me to suggest changes to the
introduction for a revised edition of AGNT; I urged him then to scrap the
whole unwieldy descriptive categorization of several different classes of
deponents in favor of a simplified designation of the morphoparadigms; in
view of the fact that Neva Miller had contributed a brilliant essay
entitled "A Theory of Deponent Verbs" that was even published as Appendix 2
in the recent revision of ANLEX, it seemed to me that the time is ripe for
this sort of reform, but I think Tim decided ultimately that there was too
much invested in the traditional system to scrap the unwieldy designation
of deponents that will still appear in the next edition of AGNT. I am
delighted to hear you say that you're seriously considering the need for
some sort of change regarding the "deponents" in MorphLXX and MorphGNT;
nevertheless I'm not holding my breath for much of a "paradigm shift" in
the very near future, much as I think it is called for.
If you haven't yet had a chance to do so, I'd suggest that you read through
the current update of my paper, "New Observations on Ancient Greek Voice,"
which is now available as a pdf file at two different sites:
http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/docs/NewObsAncGrkVc.pdf
and http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/Docs/NewObsAncGrkVc.pdf
--
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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