[B-Greek] middle voice

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Mon Sep 15 09:27:51 EDT 2003


At 5:42 AM -0700 9/15/03, Mitch Larramore wrote:
>'The beginner is apt to jump to the conclusion that
>the Greek Middle Voice is reflexive. This is not so.
>It denotes that the subject performs the action FOR
>himself, but TO himself'. (NT Greek, by Dr. Eric Jay,
>page 14)
>
>xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
>In my other first year Greek Grammar book, it seems to
>say something slightly different than what this
>Grammar book says about the Middle Voice. I was under
>the strong impression that the middle voice IS used to
>show action performed 'TO oneself' by oneself.
>
>In fact, the middle voice of LOUW is given as 'I wash
>myself' in my other grammar. This seems like the
>subject is performing and directing the action 'TO
>himself'. I was even thinking that the idea of 'I get
>myself washed' could be either middle or passive. If
>middle, 'I get myself washed by my own doing' seems to
>mean that the subject is doing the action TO himself.
>At first I thought I was just missing a small nuance,
>but then it seems bigger now.


It is indeed used to show action performed 'to or for oneself' by oneself,
but that's not the only way it's used. A form such as LOUETAI may mean "he
washes himself" or "he bathes" (where the verb is not so much
transitive-reflexive as it is intransitive" or, with an instrument or agent
indicated, can bear a passive sense: LOUETAI hUPO TOU DOULOU: "He is
getting himself bathed by his servant."

Anyone who has kept up with correspondence on B-Greek for even one year
knows that I'm truly fanatical on this question. What one really needs to
grasp about the Greek middle-passive (by which I mean both the
MAI/SAI/TAI,MHN/SO/TO and the -QH- morphoparadigms in the aorist and future
tenses) is that it may function in pretty much the same range of senses as
the Romance-Language reflexives and numerous expressions in English such as
"I'm going to get a haircut" (KARHSOMAI) or German ("ich werde die Haare
scheiden lassen"): the middle-passive form indicates fundamentally that the
person indicated by the subject is undergoing a process or experiencing an
action or experience; whether the subject or some other person or thing is
the agent or instrument of that process, action, or experience is not
indicated by the middle-passive verb-form itself, although it may be
implicit in ordinary usage of particular verbs; otherwise that agent or
instrument must be indicated by an instrumental dative or by a
prepositional phrase, most commonly hUPO + genitive.

I've already come to see that I need to revise it for clarification's sake
and to compose a briefer "Introduction to the ancient Greek
middle-passive", but the most recent full accounting of my understanding of
ancient Greek voice is accessible at:

	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
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/



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