[B-Greek] Deponents (was 2nd aorsit ... FOLLOW UP)

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Thu Apr 1 19:49:06 EST 2004


Thanks very much for your very "Erasmian" response, Joe; by that I mean
that read what you've written in that response as a very civilized comment
on the nature of the traditional designations of Greek voice in standard
pedagogical practice with a keen sense of the inadequacies of that
tradition when examined in much depth but also of the imperative necessity
to continue speaking a common grammatical language when we're talking with
each other about how Greek works. I think you may be thinking along much
the same lines as A.T. Robertson on voice (there are those who have little
use for ATR here and now, but I'm not one of them).

I can only reiterate (at the risk of it being 'ad nauseam') that I do
believe the definition of deponent as you've cited it from Wallace, Machen,
and Crosby & Schaeffer breaks down because the term "active meaning" can
readily be shown to be misleading at best. I reiterate as well that
students will do better to learn the principal parts of all irregular verbs
and to come to understand the semantic force of the middle-passive
inflections--and that the continued employment of the notion of deponency
in Greek pedagogy is an impediment to student understanding of that
semantic force. While I think there's room for yet more clarity and
simplification in presentation, I've tried to show in my little paper,
"Active, Middle, and Passive: Understanding Ancient Greek Voice," that it's
possible to make BETTER sense of ancient Greek voice WITHOUT resorting to
the concept of deponency. In fact, although it may be very naive, I really
think it may be easier to make sense of the phenomena of Greek voice than
to grasp the intricacies of verbal aspect. But I thank you yet again for a
generous and helpful response to my question.

At 4:20 PM -0600 4/1/04, Joseph Weaks wrote:
>On Mar 31, 2004, at 4:41 PM, Carl W. Conrad wrote:
>
>> At 11:23 AM -0600 3/31/04, Joseph Weaks wrote:
>>> A verb can be "deponent"
>>> (semantic active, not existing in active morphological form) in one
>>> principal part and not in another.
>>
>> I'm a bit curious, Joe, about how you are defining "semantic active."
>
>In my response to the original question, whether the anomaly being true
>for one principal part indicates that it must be true for all principal
>parts, I was simply saying "Assuming the naive textbook definition of
>deponent, some principal parts of a verb can vary." The textbook
>presentation of deponent (say in Machen, Mounce, Wallace) always
>includes this two-fold determination:  No extant active form and an
>active meaning.
>Wallace, p. 249, "A deponent middle verb is one that has no active form
>for a particular principal part in Hellenistic Greek, and one whose
>force in that principal part is evidently active."
>Machen, §116, "Many verbs have no active forms, but only middle or
>passive forms with active meaning."
>Or where I began Greek:
>Crosby&Schaeffer, §138, "Some verbs have forms only in the middle of
>passive voice but with active meanings. These are called deponents."
>However, I am now at a point much like yours, Carl, with some
>differences.
>Continuing:
>
>> We
>> had much discussion in November of 2002 on this list about
>> distinguishing
>> active, middle, and passive in semantic terms as opposed to the
>> morphoparadigms representing them. This is important for the question
>> whether we should continue to speak of "deponent" verbs. It might
>> theoretically make sense to define a "deponent" verb as a verb that
>> doesn't
>> have an active morphoparadigm--although it seems to me it would make
>> more
>> sense to try to understand WHY a verb appears in a middle-passive
>> morphoparadigm in Greek. I think that it's not appropriate to define a
>> GREEK verb as a "deponent" on the basis of whether we use an active
>> verb to
>> translate it in another language--assuming, for instance, that "come"
>> is
>> active in English (although in archaic English the perfect tense was
>> "is
>> come" rather than "has come") and must therefore really have a SEMANTIC
>> active meaning. Of course the truth is that it is intransitive...
>
>Quite simplistically, these verbs, say DECOMAI, are declared to have an
>active thrust because after all, "The guy is receiving something, not
>being received." (ignoring the middle thrust). Of course, your
>objection that "it's not appropriate to define a GREEK verb as a
>"deponent" on the basis of whether we use an active verb to translate
>it in another language" is right on target. So, the maximum definition
>of deponent that can withstand any test is in fact quite simply "a verb
>that doesn't have an active morphoparadigm." Trying to defend the
>second part of the definition leads to absurdities. Wallace declares
>DECOMAI as not a deponent, since he detects the reflexive, middle
>force. But how could he not recognize a middle force in ERCOMAI or
>LHMYOMAI or APEKRIQHV or GINOMAI? (Ok, that last word was capitalized
>not just because it's in Greek but also for emphasis. I can't think of
>anything more definitively reflexive than being."
>  I can't see how a middle year grammar can hold on to the false
>two-fold definition of deponency.
>
>The problem comes for you and I, Carl, in how we understand the
>semantic/"vocal" differences among principle parts. Though we could
>benefit from much work here, I suspect nothing close to definitive or
>even explanatory will help us understand why this first principal part
>is an active form while this second one is not in many cases.
>
>Be that as it may, yes, I was taught the rather simplistic deponent
>rule at the beginning. But it wasn't too long (months or years) into
>reading Greek that I noticed, "Hey, all these deponent verbs have a
>semantic thrust that by their very nature necessitates the involvement
>of the grammatical subject... verbs of going and following and thinking
>and taking and being." It became increasingly clear to me that the
>reason verbs were "deponent/had no active form in use" was based upon
>the meaning and usage of the word. It was part of my growing into a
>better understanding of the language, and my understanding of deponent
>came to be "Verbs whose semantic domain inherently contains a middle or
>passive thrust and so doesn't exist in an active morphoparadigm.
>But in the same way, at the beginning of first semester, I was taught
>that word order doesn't make a difference... that grammatical gender is
>not related to sex... that aorist is past time.  But by the end of the
>semester, my teacher would preach the glories of Xenephon, on the
>brilliant placement of this word in the poem for parallel emphasis.
>
>If I may digress. I don't remember much from the fourth grade, but this
>memory is fixed in my mind. Our teacher told us, "Never begin a
>sentence with 'because.' A sentence such as 'Because I like my dog.'
>starts with an insubordinate conjunction, making the sentence
>incorrect." After I completed my writing assignment, I turned it in and
>went back to my desk for a brief moment before she called me forward.
>For in my paragraph, as a shy, wayward  child desperately trying to
>make his mark in the world, I had attempted to rise above the mundane
>by writing, "Because I like my dog, I take him for a walk every day."
>She simply said, "You can't begin a sentence with 'because' and sent me
>back to my desk to rewrite the paragraph.
>
>While she failed to notice my brilliance, I do think we need to
>maintain some nomenclature for discussing, and more importantly
>teaching, these dynamic verbs. Beginning students need a way to know
>what form they need to memorize as a principal part, and in some way it
>may pave the way for a category that can be understood as verbs which
>are semantically inherently wrapped up in a middle or passive force.
>And if the initial description is oversimplistic, well, so it is with
>beginnings. Because part of learning is discovering the errors in what
>you thought you knew.
>
>Oh... and.. I walk my dog every day.
>
>Cheers,
>Joe Weaks
>
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-- 

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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