[B-Greek] Accusative of retained object

Bert de Haan b_dehaan at sympatico.ca
Tue May 22 18:41:28 EDT 2007



Carl W. Conrad wrote:
>Personally I think we get "boxed into" this problem of "retained 
>accusative"
>because we think fundamentally about voice in terms of active-passive
>opposition. In fact, however, Greek has a fundamental opposition of
>active and middle with a middle sometimes functioning as the vehicle
>of passive semantics.
>

Sometimes things take a while to sink in.  As I was looking for an answer to 
this question I read in Smyth that the passive was formed from the middle.
Carl will probably sigh and think; "I've been trying to say that for years." 
   Well, it finally clicked.
I thought of the voices as Active over against Passive with Middle having 
some vague purpose in between somewhere.  Now I see it as Active over 
against Middle with Middle having the additional purpose of taking care of 
the Passive.

Bert de Haan.





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