[B-Greek] Deponents (was 2nd aorsit ... FOLLOW UP)
Stephen C. Carlson
scarlson at mindspring.com
Fri Apr 2 15:41:50 EST 2004
I don't want to get into a big discussion here on Latin morphology and
syntax either, but I respect you too much pass up an opportunity
in trying to understand the basis of any disagreement you may have
with I wrote. So, I'll be as brief as I can be.
"Carl W. Conrad" <cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu> wrote:
>This is not really an appropriate forum for discussing Latin morphology and
>syntax; therefore I'll add only a couple footnotes to the discussion at
>this point: (1) Defining "deponent" as a verb that "lays down its passive
>meaning" strikes me as no better than defining it as a verb that "lays down
>its active form"); it's hard for me to see how we can see a verb "lays
>down" something that there's no evidence it ever had;
I suppose one flaw in my definition is that I've defined deponents in
terms of what they are *not* rather than in terms of what they *are*.
(I'm still uncertain, on account of verbs like AGGREDIOR, that being
middle can be a general purpose solution.) This would make Latin
deponents a residual category rather than a natural class. So in this
respect, I could agree that deponency isn't an objectively real part of
the Latin language, if that's what your objection is. Even so, a residual
category is a sort of a fudge factor, and some of them are more useful
than others. To the extent my recent remarks about the usefulness
of deponency as a category in Latin (of which I think I've said enough)
were so imprecise as to also imply its linguistic reality, I'd disavow any
such implication.
Stephen Carlson
--
Stephen C. Carlson,
mailto:scarlson at mindspring.com
"Poetry speaks of aspirations, and songs chant the words." Shujing 2.35
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