[B-Greek] Last question on Verbal components

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Fri Feb 20 15:34:27 EST 2004


At 10:22 AM -0800 2/20/04, Mitch Larramore wrote:
>I am so very sorry for belaboring this point. I
>promise to move on even if I fail to understand this.
>
>I am having a hard time formulating my question. But
>here is another example that may help me understand
>the idea of STEMS and their relationship to VOICE.
>
>Mounce lists the LU of this Aorist Active Participle
>as the "unaumented Aorist ACTIVE stem" (my emphasis).
>
>LU SA NT OS
>
>The SA is the Tense formative, but not the VOICE
>formative if I understand him right. (And of course
>this would only be the tense formatives in the Active
>and Middle, not the Passive.)
>
>However, if you look at the Aorist Middle and Passive
>forms, this ACTIVE VOICE LU "stem" remains. Seems to
>me that identifying this LU as being ACTIVE VOICE
>somehow is creating confusion, since the same LU is
>found in the Middle and Passive VOICE forms of this
>participle.
>
>Maybe I'm misunderstanding his terminology. Or maybe
>he's using a bad example to illustrate his point. In
>my mind, I am predisposed to think this way:
>
>LUSA is the Active and Middle
>LUQ is the Passive
>
>I could even think of LU-SANT as Active and LU-SAMEN
>as Middle, and LU-QENT as Passive. More letters to
>remember but maybe a bit more accurate. However, the
>down side is I am including thematic vowels as part of
>the VOICE indicators which doesn't make sense even to
>me. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Here's how I would understand these forms:

(1) LU- is the ROOT of the verb; it is the element that is constant in all
conceivable verb forms of LUW in any mood,voice, finite verb, infinitive,
or participle.

(2) I would speak of the present stem as LU- or LU-O/E (because all present
tense forms of any mood or voice,finitive or infinitive or participial
forms are built upon LU- with a thematic vowel O/E.

(3) I would speak of the aorist stem of this verb as LU-SA because the
formative element -SA- is attached to the root LU- and LUSA- is found in
all aorist tense forms of any mood or voice, finitive verb, infinitive or
participle with the exception of what are conventionally called aorist and
future "passive." I would NOT call LUSA- an "active aorist" stem but simply
a "sigmatic aorist stem."

(4) I would speak of the aorist "passive" stem of this verb as LUQH/E
because the "passive" formative element with its variable vowel H/E is
added to the verb ROOT LU- to form LU-QH/E; this is found in all the finite
forms of all moods in the aorist "passive" and in the infinitive and in the
participle.

(5) I wqould speak of the future "passive" stem of this verb as LUQH-S-O/E
because it is a thematic tense with middle-passive endings attached to the
thematic stem consisting of LUQH and the future formative element -S-
regularly followed by the thematic vowel O/E.

LU- is not an ACTIVE stem at all; it is the ROOT of this verb, and it just
so happens that in the case of this verb the root LU is used with attached
thematic vowel to form a present tense.

I don't mind more questions about this. You should realize that Mounce may
have had his own reasons for speaking of LU- as an "active voice stem."
It's just that I don't understand why such terminology is justified.
-- 

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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