[B-Greek] Voice: Distinguishing a Middle from a Passive
John Sanders
john.franklin.sanders at gmail.com
Tue Nov 13 08:49:18 EST 2007
It is with interest that I read the various postings on voice, but sometimes
it appears that those postings can be somewhat confusing to those just
learning Koine Greek. I do not know if I can be any clearer, but I would
like to add some commentary.
When we begin to discuss "middle voice" and "passive voice", especially for
us beginners, it may be instructive to define one of the terms first. I
believe "passive" is the easier to define, so I will begin there. I believe
my definition is accurate and correct, but it may be disappointing to those
seeking philosophical obfuscation.
To understand the "passive", one should begin with the "active". An example
of an "active" construction is a noun in the Nominative Case, a verb in the
any mood and tense in the Active Voice, and a noun in the Accusative Case. The
Nominative "verbs" the Accusative. The verb needs to be transitive. The
"passive" is now defined as the taking the Accusative noun and putting it in
the Nominative Case, transforming the verb into its Middle Voice
counterpart, and transforming the "active" Nominative case noun into an
adverbial (often a Dative Case noun, other times "hUPO" with the noun in the
Genitive Case). Now the Nominative "is being verbed", with the adverbial
being the agent of the "verbing".
An example using English to represent the Greek:
Active: I 'baptize' you.
Passive: You 'are being baptized' by me.
The words between the ' ' represent the Greek verb form.
The first observation we should make is that this definition does not define
the Middle Voice verb. It defines the relationship between two nouns: in
the "active voice" the relationship is between the Nominative Case noun and
Accusative Case noun, in the "passive voice" the relationship is between the
Nominative Case Noun and an oblique case noun.
When we look at the Middle Voice, we quickly see that its range of use is
with both intransitive verbs and passive verbs. It can be speculated that
in an early phase of PIE (Proto Indo-European) that a proto-active voice
represented transitive verbs and a proto-middle voice represented
intransitive verbs.
Looking at intransitive verbs, one can imagine that the Nominative case noun
in the Middle Voice began to be considered as marked (or emphasized)
vis-à-vis the Nominative Case in the Active Voice (the Nominative does not
need to share one's attention with an Accusative case noun). After, say a
thousand years (40 generations or so) a shift takes place in PIE and the PIE
speakers no longer have the strong association of Active Voice with
transitive verbs and Middle Voice with intransitive verbs, but rather begin
to associate the Middle Voice with some type of emphasis on the subject in
some general way. At this stage they begin to associate the adverbial
construction with the Middle Voice verb, creating the Passive Voice. This
helps to associate transitiveness with the Middle Voice, further weakening
any association between Middle Voice and intransitive verbs. So begins the
beginning of how we now think of the Middle Voice.
I do not know if that scenario took place or not, but one can still use it
to think about the Middle Voice and its usage.
In other words, I would think that, unless an accusative case is involved in
the construction, a Middle Voice form of a verb ought to be thought of as
either intransitive (default case) or passive (if accompanied by an
appropriate adverbial or if context should require such a reading).
In other words, if I saw the form BAPTIZOMAI, without any adverbial
complement, I would prefer the intransitive "I am baptized" to the passive
"I am being baptized."
John Sanders
Suzhou, China
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