Setting facts straight (WAS: "Re: Explaining the Greek Verb System")

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Mon Jun 3 07:13:53 EDT 2002


At 2:24 PM +0000 6/2/02, Mark Wilson wrote:
>Ward:
>
>You wrote:
>
>-------
>>Now, my view is that a student can come to read the GNT without having to
>>have studied the prior history of the language. There may well be a few
>>instances where an understanding of the development of koine Greek may help
>>a student with forms s/he encounters in the GNT, but not very many.
>-------
>
>I believe Ward is correct here, but I would also add that there
>is more than meets the eye with the above, at least in my view.
>
>Ward is correct, I think, that a student could READ the GNT by
>studying it alone. And can learn to parse any word.
>
>However, this same student would be no better off than NOT having
>learned the Greek at all, and simply get a good English translation,
>or whatever native language he/she understands.
>
>In other words, a student that learns the GNT only, really at best
>can assume the role of a middle man. That is, this student can only
>go to a lexicon, take the authors' word for what HE IS TOLD, and then
>go repeat this same information in his/her translation or understanding.
>This is not "understanding" Greek. And if those who supply Ward with
>the information are incorrect, then Ward will be incorrect, albeit
>unknowingly.
>
>In fact, as a good example, and I mean no disrespect to Ward, but
>Ward recently had what appeared to me to be a very basic question
>on the Middle Voice. Here was his question:
>
>--------
>We were cogitating last night over AITHSHi in John 11:22. This form is
>third person singular aorist subjunctive active. But the required form has
>to be second person - we felt that this should have been AITHSHiS, for, in
>context, Martha says to Jesus: "but even now I know that whatever you would
>ask God for, God will give you." And in fact Nestle-Aland records a few
>manuscripts which do have this reading AITHSHiS (so we are not the first to
>prefer this form, though our UBS does not indicate a variant for this word
>in this verse).
>
>There is of course another explanation: AITHSHi must here be second person
>ditto ditto MIDDLE. And this must be it. But why middle? Martha can't be
>saying, "I know that whatever you ask God for FOR YOURSELF, God will give
>you." So why middle here, instead of the active (which we expected)?
>-------
>
>This question really reflects a good grasp of GNT grammars, but at
>the same time shows a limited understanding of Greek. What Ward
>is asking stems from a his understanding of the GNT, whereas the
>answer was quite simple, as Carl demonstrated. And Carl's clear
>genius of this language does not come from studying a few documents
>known as the GNT.
>
>Now in fairness to Ward, I'm not sure that the tentative conclusions
>that Carl has offered us on his studies of the M/P morphoparadigms
>could not have been discovered by limiting one's self to the GNT.

In fact I rather think that Mark does overstate the case here. While
certainly my research has led me to think that what I've called
"subject-focus" continues to be a key element in the choice of middle
rather than active voice where there is a choice, my comment on Ward's
question was based heavily on a check of the GNT database in Accordance and
so really wasn't a matter of diachronic thinking about the language:

At 7:00 AM -0400 4/25/02, Carl W. Conrad wrote:
>
>Ward, I think you're limiting the force of the middle too much here: it
>doesn't mean that something is being asked to be given to one's self alone;
>it means rather (I think) that one makes the request with strong personal
>concern, that one BEGS, PLEADS EARNESTLY. I think that's an authentic
>middle force.
>
>The verb AITEW appears 70x in the GNT, 38 in the active, 32 in the middle
>(and these are all, I think, authentically middle)--there are no -QH-
>forms. You might look at other middle forms and consider the same question.
>--
-- 

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
Most months:: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu OR cwconrad at ioa.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/



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