[B-Greek] TRUE Deponents
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Mon Sep 13 17:04:22 EDT 2004
At 9:34 AM -0700 9/13/04, Eddie Mishoe wrote:
>Carl:
>
>Thanks for helping me think this through. Here is what
>I am looking for.
>
>By true deponent, I mean a verb Middle in form, but
>has laid aside (depone) its Middle voice semantics for
>an Active voice force.
>
>An example would be John 4:52
>
>EPUQETO OUN THN hWRAN PARí AUTWN EN hHi KOMYOTERON
>ESCEN...
>
>
>Here, many take PUNQANOMAI as a true middle deponent,
>taking it to mean he "asked (Active voice force) them
>the hour..."
>
>Now, someone might say that the idea is that he asked
>for his own benefit, understanding it as a Middle
>voice force.
>
>What I am looking for is a true Middle deponent, one
>where the Middle voice force as CLEARLY been laid
>aside. Otherwise, why the fuss over Middle deponents
>at all.
Eddie, I think you're confused about what is usually meant by
"deponent"--although I frankly think anybody who tries to make sense of the
traditional doctrine of deponency will indeed find it confusing. At any
rate, the usual view is that such a verb as PUNQANOMAI is "deponent"
because it has "laid aside" an active form and appears for no good reason
whatsoever in the middle voice. I think that there is now a growing
awareness that the notion of "deponency" has been borrowed--like the word
itself--from Latin grammar, and that it doesn't really apply very well to
the Greek verbal system. It would be better to understood such middle-voice
forms as PUNQANOMAI (which NEVER, so far as anyone can demonstrate) had an
active form that it could "lay aside") as middle in conception in that the
verb-form expresses that the subject of the verb is affected by the verbal
action: the real sense of PUNQANOMAI is "inform oneself by asking
questions." It will take a direct object of the item that is the object of
inquiry, but the fact that it takes a direct object does not mean that it
is an active verb.
If you care to explore a view of the Greek voice system that dispenses with
the notion of "deponency" and attempts to justice to the semantic values
indicated by middle and passive morphology, you can read on-line (or
download by option-clicking) my discussions from my web-page
http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/current.html
There is 9-page PDF document offering a fairly straightforward account of
the Greek voice system, entitled "Active, Middle, and Passive:
Understanding Ancient Greek Voice" and there is a fuller account setting
forth the rationale for that understanding of the Greek voice-system, "New
Observations on Ancient Greek Voice."
--
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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