[B-Greek] QHN QHS QH... as Middle
Kevin Riley
klriley at alphalink.com.au
Thu Aug 16 21:10:18 EDT 2007
-------Original Message-------
From: Delbert Flora
Date: 17/08/2007 8:16:06 AM
Follow up to this statement by Dr. C. Conrad:
>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.
For some reason, I was under the impression that MOST MHN/SO/TO forms are
Pragmatically (how they are actually used in the GNT) middle, and that MOST
QHN/QHS/QH forms are pragmatically passive. Given the above information, is
My impression wrong? It would not make sense for a primarily middle
Conjugation to be replaced by a primarily passive conjugation.
Delbert Flora
***************
Historically Greek - like the parent Indo-European - had a distinction
between middle and active verbs. The passive is, in Greek, a developed use
of the middle. I am still puzzling over how a form that is subject focused
- the middle - came also to be used to represent the passive where the
subject is not the focus, and need not appear at all. I suspect if we had a
longer history of Greek we would see how it happened, but until we discover
pre-Homeric literature I guess it will remain conjecture. It doesn't
actually rate as the most strange development in grammatical history. Much
stranger things have happened in other languages. We should not approach
the history of language as if it were driven entirely by logic.
Kevin Riley
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