Of Tooth Extraction
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Tue Oct 22 07:09:09 EDT 2002
At 1:18 PM +0300 10/22/02, Iver Larsen wrote:
>Thanks to both Richard and Carl.
>Thanks to Richard and Carl. I'll leave the sealing and the painful tooth
>aside, but
>would like to bring up another point that might further clarify or confuse
>the issue, I don't know which.
>
>[Richard:]> >EXELKETAI TON ODONTA or hO ODOUS EXELKETAI
>> >
>> >"He is having his tooth dragged out" or "His tooth is being dragged out".
>
>>
>[Carl:]> Thanks, Richard. I wondered about these verbs, but then it occurred
>to me
>> that alternativeS would be XURAW, "shave" (the middle XURAOMAI having the
>> sense, "have oneself shaved") and KEIRW, "cut the hair" (the middle
>> KEIRASQAI having the sense "have one's hair cut").
>> --
>
>Acts 12:2 ANEILEN DE IAKWBON TON ADELFON IWANNOU MACAIRHi
>
>Herod killed James with a sword.
>The verb is active aorist. How does that translate into English?
>
>RSV: He killed James the brother of John with the sword
>NIV: He had James, the brother of John, put to death with the sword
>GNB: He had James, the brother of John, put to death by the sword
>NLT: He had the apostle James (John's brother) killed with a sword
>NCV: He ordered James, the brother of John, to be killed by the sword.
>
>It does not seem to be much of a problem in Hebrew and Greek to say that "X
>did Y" and leave it to the reader to understand that X did not do Y himself,
>but he had someone else do it for him.
>This idea is not common in ordinary English, and that is why many
>translations clarify that he did not do it himself, but he caused it to be
>done. So instead of saying "X did Y", they say "X had Y done".
>
>What I am wondering about is how this pragmatic understanding interferes
>with the function of the middle. Since Acts 12:2 (and many other places in
>the Bible) have this phenomenon both with active and middle verbs, I am not
>so sure that this aspect is really part of the significance of the middle
>form.
>
>Could the middle of KEIRW not just mean "he cut his own hair" in contrast to
>cutting someone else's hair? Whether he actually cut his hair himself or had
>someone do it for him, may go beyond the grammar into pragmatics. The same
>applies to shaving.
>I can shave another person (active), shave myself (middle), have someone
>shave me (middle) or be shaved by someone (passive).
>Herod can kill a person (active), have someone kill him (active) or be
>killed by someone (passive).
Yes, KEIRW in the middle (EKEIRATO) CAN mean "he cut his own hair" as
opposed to the active (EKEIREN, "he cut X's hair"), but it can ALSO mean
"he had his hair cut." What I think you have put your finger (or virtual
finger?) upon the key fact here: that passive meaning (since you don't want
to talk about semantic passive any more) can only be expressed by the MP
morphoparadigms, and that Greek speakers/writers were not particularly
concerned to indicate passivity AS SUCH other than when they added on
adverbial modifiers to indicate agent, means, or intermediary.
--
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.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
More information about the B-Greek
mailing list