[B-Greek] Third-person commands
Yancy Smith
Y.W.Smith at tcu.edu
Fri Nov 18 12:47:09 EST 2005
I am with you, Don, on the subject of passive transformations of
active statements, but I don't think it is proper to see the third
person active imperative as a passive construction, because there are
(even in my Matthew list) some third person passive imperatives. Your
example below would be expressed as a third person passive imperative:
> That is, the 2p command "Do this" is switched to "This is to be
> done [by you]," where the agent (you) is implied but not expressed.
> I thought of several everyday examples, such as "Do the dishes
> before I get back" vis-a-vis "The dishes are to be done before I
> get back."
In the following case, I don't see how "inform," "is to know" are
passive:
> A 3p command like "No one is to know about this" may not seem to
> fit at first, but what we really have is "Do not inform anyone" vs.
> "no one is to know," where "know" is an equivalent to the passive
> of "inform".
However, I think that the use of 3rd person imperatives to address
2nd persons is analogous to some passive transformations in that they
are ways of speaking indirectly to 2nd persons. I think it is very
important not to confuse INDIRECT communication with PASSIVE
constructions, though they both are ways of including 2nd persons in
the performance of commands directed to 3rd persons not present. This
is done to allow the 2nd persons to save face, to allow speakers to
express something unpleasant in a less offensive way, and I believe
it can be shown that passive constructions are capable of the same
thing. What remains to be seen is whether NT third person
imperatives, whether active or passive, are USUALLY addressing 2nd
persons indirectly or whether they normally address 3rd persons in
absentia. I am inclined to believe the former.
In the case of ORATE MHDEIS GINWSKETW the action of the 2nd persons
is explicitly enjoined, so that we have a double imperative. I think
this is a good model upon which to build a theoretical way of seeing
3rd person commands and their relation to 2nd persons. The author
could just as well have said MHDEIS GINWSKETW and meant the same
thing. This tells me that 3rd person commands can either express or
not the implicit 2nd person command associated with them, as your
discussion implies.
Yancy
Yancy Smith
Y.W.Smith at tcu.edu
Brite Divinity School
Texas Christian University
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