[B-Greek] Middle and Passive Voice
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad2 at mac.com
Sat Aug 26 16:55:19 EDT 2006
On Saturday, August 26, 2006, at 03:06PM, James Tauber <jtauber at jtauber.com> wrote:
>Dionysios Thrax on Voice:
>
>
>????????? ???? ?????, ????????,
>?????, ???????? ???????? ??? ????
>?????, ????? ?? ???? ????????,
>??????? ?? ? ???? ??? ?????????
>???? ?? ????? ?????????, ????
>?????? ???????? ??????????
>?????????.
>
>DIAQESEIS EISI TREIS, ENERGEIA, PAQOS, MESOTHS:
>ENERGEIA MEN OI(ON TUPTW,
>PAQOS DE OI(ON TUPTOMAI,
>MESOTHS DE H( POTE MEN ENERGEIAN POTE DE PAQOS PARISTASA,
>OI(ON PEPHGA DIEFQORA EPOIHSAMHN EGRAFAMHN.
>
>It's easy to see how the Greek terms relate to our own words. Even
>the semantic role PATIENT is cognate with PAQOS.
>
>Not surprisingly, Dionysios is concerned mostly (entirely?) with form
>and gives -W and -OMAI as the forms of the ACTIVE and PASSIVE.
>
>Would it be correct to translate the penultimate line something like
>"The middle sometimes represents the active and sometimes the
>passive"? Or perhaps more insightfully "The middle sometimes
>represents the AGENT and sometimes the PATIENT".
Yes, I think that's right.
>Not quite sure what he means by the corrupted writing in the last line.
I'm not sure about that either -- the perfects PEPHGA and DIEFQORA, and several other older "second perfects" are intransitive and correspond more to the middle present than to an active present. EPOIHSAMHN is, of course, aorist middle. Is EGRAFAMHN right? or is it rather EGRAYAMHN?
I don't think that Thrax's account is very helpful, really.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/
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