[B-Greek] On Voice
John Sanders
jfs at jfsanders.com
Thu May 24 09:22:20 EDT 2007
To summarize from my last posting: Concerning voice, we may consider that Greek has two forms, one form called the "Active Voice" and the other form called the "Middle Voice". The "Active Voice" encodes the plain sense of the meaning into the verb and the "Middle Voice" encodes a "Middle" meaning into the verb (that is, the subject itself is involve in the verb, or that the verb was deliberate, etc.).
We need two definitions to complete the paradigm: "Active Sense" and "Passive Sense". The definition of "Active Sense" is that whatever the verb does, it does it from the subject, or the subject transmits the verb away from itself. The defintion of the "Passive Sense" is that whatever the verb does, it does it toward or to the subject.
All words that are in the set called "Active Voice" are in the "Active sense". All words that are in the set called "Middle Voice" may be either in the "Active Sense" or in the "Passive Sense". The individual words will not be in every form available. In other words, in some tenses a word maybe in both the "Active Voice" and in the "Middle Voice", in other tenses the in one "Voice" but not in the other "Voice". Also, there is more than one form available in the "Middle Voice?
John Sanders
Suzhou, China
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