[B-Greek] Gal 2:13
Ron Ross
rross at irazu.net
Tue May 24 03:44:37 EDT 2005
Regarding the question about agency, the presence of an agent is a good sign
the form is passive, but bear in mind that --cross-linguistically-- the
majority of passives in any running text do not express any agent. The
whole point of using a passive is to demote the agent and promote the
patient to subject position and topic. Good (i.e. prototypical) agents must
be highly animate (usually human) and must act willfully upon the patient.
But other semantic roles can appear in passive constructions such as
'forces' ('the skier was killed by the avalanche').
Ronald Ross
Department of Linguistics
Universidad de Costa Rica
-----Original Message-----
From: b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Mitch Larramore
Sent: Monday, May 23, 2005 3:38 PM
To: B Greek
Subject: [B-Greek] Gal 2:13
KAI SUNUPEKRIQHSAN AUTWi [KAI] hOI LOIPOI IOUDAIOI,
hWSTE KAI BARNABAS SUNAPHCQH AUTWN THi hUPOKRISEI.
I have two, separate questions here. The first is
rather insignificant. I wonder if the first century
Greeks pronounced SUNUPEKRIQHSAN as SUNhUPEKRIQHSAN?
Phonetically, it seems equally effortless to include
the rough breathing. Seems odd that in the same verse
you would pronounce forms of this word differently.
Second question deals with agency. I ask myself every
time now when I see a -QH form if it could be Middle
or Passive. I understand that if an agent is
mentioned, it will be Passive. Is that right? Does an
"agent" have to be a person? Or, could THi hUPOKRISEI
be the agent that caused Barnabas to follow suit? What
also leads me to see a Middle here even though there
might be an agent is in the previous verse, we are
told that Peter AFWRIZEN hEAUTON. There is no passive
sense here.
Which structure gives more emphasis to the semantics
of a Middle: 1) Active verb with reflexive pronoun, or
2) Middle voice verb? (My guess would be an Active
with reflexive pronoun since there really can't be
ambiguity in that construct.)
Mitch Larramore
Sugar Land, Texas
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - Helps protect you from nasty viruses.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
---
B-Greek home page: http://metalab.unc.edu/bgreek
B-Greek mailing list
B-Greek at lists.ibiblio.org
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-greek
More information about the B-Greek
mailing list