[B-Greek] QHN QHS QH... as Middle

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Thu Aug 16 17:42:32 EDT 2007


On Aug 16, 2007, at 2:03 PM, Delbert Flora wrote:

> I've read some of the archives in which the traditional Aorist Passive
> Indicative is said to include the Middle as well.
>
> Could you provide at least two or three examples in which a E-QHN  
> QHS QH...
> form could NOT POSSIBLY by taken as Passive?

Well, there come readily to mind EPOREUQHN, aorist of POREUOMAI --  
HDUNHQHN, aorist of DUNAMAI. These verbs were traditionally called  
"passive deponents" and the claim made that they were passive in form  
only. The fact is that it is erroneous to think of the -QH- endings  
as distinctly passive; they are, like the MAI/SAI/TAI,MHN/SO/TO  
endings, ambivalently middle-passive. An important fact of Greek  
linguistic history is that the -QH- forms increasingly came to  
replace the older second-aorist MHN/SO/TO aorists. E.g., the form  
EGENHQHN supplants the older form EGENOMHN with no demonstrable  
difference in meaning from EGENOMHN.

There are also several verbs that I consider fundamentally "middle"  
verbs because their middles are intransitive, even though they have  
active causative forms, e.g. EGEIROMAI "wake up/rise up" (active  
causative EGEIRW "awaken") with aorist HGERQHN "I rose, awoke"). I  
would argue that FAINOMAI belongs in this group too; there's an  
active causative FAINW with its active causative aorist EFHNA, but  
the aorist of FAINOMAI is EFANHN ("I appeared."


Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/





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