[B-Greek] Middle voice and passive construction

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Thu Feb 8 07:30:07 EST 2007


On Feb 7, 2007, at 11:28 PM, JFS wrote:

> It appears to me that Koine Greek is generally taught as if it were  
> a dead fish.  We look at its entrails; count its scales, etc.   
> There is nothing wrong with that, but I suspect that after a while  
> dead fish tend to stinketh.  I am attempting to learn the language  
> as if it were a live fish, a difficult task.

It's curious that you should have hit upon precisely this analogy in  
a message to precisely this discussion-list. There's a passage in  
Aristotle's little treatise entitled "On the Parts of Animals" that  
says something like: "Do not disdain to examine the entrails of a  
fish, for God is to be found in the entrails of a fish." He certainly  
didn't mean that's the only place to look for God (anymore than he  
meant quite the same thing as we would mean by "God"), but that  
there's something to be learned about the mind of God when examining  
the entrails of a fish (I sometimes expect that if he were living and  
working today, Aristotle would find NOHSIS NOHSEWS nowhere more  
surely than in a biology laboratory). I rather like the idea of  
"learning a language as if it were a live fish." And it's certainly  
true that the more common approach is to learn it as if it were a  
DEAD fish.

> Given that, what I attempt to do is re-learn what I have studied,  
> but in a slightly different environment.  So I have put down the  
> GNT for a wee bit, and have taken up Euclid's Elements.  I like the  
> Elements, it is authentic Greek and not watered down child's  
> speak.  It has a rather small vocabulary, so learning vocabulary  
> does not interfere with learning the grammar and syntax.   It is  
> doctrinally neutral, so it allows one to focus on the language, and  
> the vocabulary is rather straight forward and re-enforces the   
> grammar and syntax (especially in the propositions, one reads the  
> proposition, follow the directions and construct and figure using a  
> straight edge and a compass).

This seems to me to be an excellent fish to learn on. As I recall,  
the only place I've ever seen a passage from Euclid used in a  
beginning Greek text was a short proof cited at the end of a lesson  
in an old standard textbook, Chase & Phillips -- I don't know if it's  
in print any more.

> Having said (or written) the above, I find reading the elements is  
> going rather smoothly.  But there are some glitches.  For the noun  
> system I only stumble over the dative case when there is no  
> preposition involved.  What I mean by this, is that when I read a  
> sentence, it comes along rather smoothly, but when I come to a  
> dative case without being introduced by a preposition, then I have  
> to stop and think before I continue on.  I suspect this is because  
> in English we use the dative case (and ablative, etc.) with a  
> preposition.

Well, I don't really use the dative case in English much, unless I'm  
saying "I just sent George a message." Nor the ablative, unless I'm  
saying "This ladder wants four feet more to reach that upper  
window" (although I suppose we'd analyze "four feet more" as a direct  
object accusative of "wants."

> Likewise, in the verbal system I have no problem with the active  
> voice, indicative mood.  But I do have to stop and think when I  
> come across a middle voice form.
>
> Now in my simple mind, all passive forms imply a middle voice.   
> "The vase was smashed by a falling hammer" versus "A falling hammer  
> smashed the vase."  When our ancestors (our language ancestors)  
> invented English, they simplified the verbal system so that the  
> middle voice could only be conveyed by the passive form.  In  
> consequence, we have analyzed the form rather than the voice and  
> have lost consciousness of the middle voice.

I'm not sure that's quite how our ancestors invented English. It's  
true that traditional or conventional English grammar envisions  
verbal voice in a bipolar active-passive dimensionality. But the  
meanings conveyed by the middle voice in Greek are those conveyed in  
quite a few languages by reflexive verbs ("Aqui se habla español")  
and there are alternative grammatical accounts of English usage that  
speak of an English "ergative" form that pretty well corresponds to  
the Greek middle, as for example, although we might say that "I roll  
my ball to Daddy" is active, "My ball rolls to Daddy" is ergative --  
in Greek it would be middle voice. This is really fairly common: "I  
sell books cheaply" is active, but "My books sell cheaply" is  
ergative. In Greek it would be middle. You can say that this is  
simply a matter of whether we use the verb transitively or  
intransitively but that's not really the whole story. Instead of "My  
books sell cheaply," we may say, "My books get sold inexpensively."  
In fact "get" + participle generally conveys the same ambiguity (not  
ambivalence, but ambiguity) as does the Greek middle-passive form. If  
I say, "I got drunk last weekend," the verb phrase "got drunk" is  
certainly not passive; rather, it expresses that the subject of the  
verb entered into a condition or state. That's one of the primary  
semantic forces of the Greek middle voice.

> So when we read Greek (or Latin) and if the middle voice is in the  
> format of the passive construction, we can read it in the English.   
> But if it is not in the passive construction, then we have no  
> mechanism to convey that in English and it is deponent (deponent in  
> English, not in the original Greek or Latin).  I suspect that is  
> the reason that I stumble over this form.

As I've tried to show you, that's not really the case. The truth is  
rather than you don't find much discussion of the "ergative" forms or  
of "get" + participle verb phrases in the grammars you are most  
likely to consult.

> My question is do other students also have problems with the middle  
> voice, and for you who are fluent, do you  use or read the middle  
> voice comfortably.

I take it that you have not yet seen my (still in progress) work on  
ancient Greek voice with special attention to the morphology and  
semantics of middle and passive:

	http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/GrkVc.html

I'd particularly recommend the 9-page account, "Active, Middle, and  
Passive: Understanding Ancient Greek Voice." The older account, "New  
Observations on Ancient Greek Voice" needs a lot of reworking. My  
current thinking about ancient Greek voice is set forth on that web- 
page (GrkVc.html) which is meant as a stopgap meaasure, but there's a  
lot of fleshing out that is called for.

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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