[B-Greek] middle voice

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Mon Sep 15 19:31:10 EDT 2003


At 2:02 PM -0700 9/15/03, Mitch Larramore wrote:
>Earlier this was given as a reply to my question. I
>have this followup question.
>
>Dr. Conrad replied:
>> 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."
>
>Just to understand this. A middle voice verb can
>function as a true middle even if an instrument is
>indicated? (I assume that a middle voice cannot
>function as a middle if an agent is indicated.)

One of the misconceptions about the middle-passive is that a single
morphoparadigm can be used alternatively for either of two different
semantic functions: (a) "middle" indicating that subject is the experient
or recipient of action performed by himself in his own interest,or (b)
"passive" indicating that subject is acted upon by some external agent or
instrumentality.

This is not so much false as it is misleading and so opens the way to
serious misunderstanding of WHY ancient Greek was content to use a single
morphoparadigm, whether that was the MAI/SAI/TAI,MHN/SO/TO one or the -QH-
one, to represent what English-speakers may prefer to view as two distinct
notions. Greek didn't see the need to make that distinction; if it had felt
the need, it might have created morphoparadigms that really carried
distinct and exclusive "middle" or "passive" meanings. Instead, what Greek
did was employ a form indicating that the subject of the verb was involved
somehow as the recipient or experient of action or alteration of condition.
My example above of LOUETAI is, I think, exemplary of this potential for
representing both action brought about by the subject and action brought
about by an external source.

Something essentially similar may be observed with the Middle-passive forms
of EGEIRW:

EGEIRONTAI: "they wake up"; HGERQHSAN: "they woke up" -- intransitive,
subject undergoes experience of waking
EGEIRONTAI (HGERQHSAN) hOI NEKROI hUPO TOU QEOU: "the dead wake/woke at the
command of God"--while we may interpret this as a passive and translate it
as "the dead are/were resurrected by God," there is no difference in the
essential form or meaning of the verb-forms EGEIRONTAI/HGERQHSAN, but the
added prepositional phrase makes it clear that the impetus for the rising
of the dead is the action of God, and that is why we may legitimately
translate these verbs into English as passives. But the addition of the
hUPO TOU QEOU doesn't really alter the form or function of the verb form
itself, which is why I would prefer to call both EGEIRONTAI and HGERQHSAN
"middle-passive" rather than simply "passive."

Comparable is the adnominal genitive of a noun that may be understood to
represent the subject or object of a verbal noun, e.g. PISTIS IHSOU
CRISTOU; there is no distinction in the Greek IHSOU CRISTOU between the
form of a "subjective genitive" and an "objective genitive." That
distinction is one made by the translator--and while it is usually made
with good reasons, it is sometimes made quite arbitrarily and possibly
erroneously: the distinction between these genitive functions is in the
mind of the translator rather than in the mind of the speaker/writer who
chooses to use the genitive.
-- 

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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