[B-Greek] H vs. QH passives in Homer
Carl Conrad
cwconrad2 at mac.com
Sun Feb 3 07:18:24 EST 2008
On Feb 2, 2008, at 5:05 PM, Elizabeth Kline wrote:
>
> On Feb 2, 2008, at 3:48 AM, Carl Conrad wrote:
>
>> You are quite right about this: there's no temporal axis. On the
>> other hand, I rather think that an endeavor to provide one would
>> fail because of the difficulty of dating specific verses or blocks
>> of text within the Homeric corpus. Certainly Aristarchus and
>> Aristophanes of Byzantium obelized verses that they deemed
>> interpolated or added to the text later, but there is an
>> unavoidable subjectivity in this business of assigning portions of
>> the corpus to one era or another. On the other hand, one can
>> analyze the data, as I think Allan has done, and take note of where
>> the different semantic categories fall within morphological types
>> in the extant corpus as a whole. I think it's a safe assumption
>> (others might not) that the -QH- forms are later-emergent than the
>> simpler -H- forms. And as I noted, Allan goes on in later chapters
>> to show how the -QH- forms extend over a wider range of semantic
>> categories than they did in the Homeric corpus.
>
> Carl,
>
> I think we are in agreement on several issues. Particularly the
> unavoidable subjectivity. There seems to be a lot of speculation in
> chapter three. I don't think this is the strong portion of this book.
> After a few more hours of trying to make sense of his argument I once
> again looked at his conclusions for this chapter to see where he was
> trying to go with it.
>
> I find his conclusions less than convincing. On pages 174-176 Allan
> tries to define his high level abstract schema for the -(Q)H- aorists
> and sigmatic middles: "I would like to suggest that the abstract
> meaning of the passive in -(Q)H- can best be characterized in
> relation to the notion of prototypical patient." The prototypical
> patient as defined by Langaker 1991:285 has the following essential
> properties:
>
> 1 - inanimacy
> 2 - non-volitionality
> 3 - presence of an external initiator
> 4 - internal change of state
>
> Allan claims that -(Q)H- aorists meet at least one of the criteria
> for a prototypical patient. The most common criteria for -(Q)H-
> aorists is #4 "internal change of state". This is one criteria that
> sets -(Q)H- aorists apart from sigmatic middles in his sample. The
> sigmatic middles in his sample are all animate and agentive and do
> not undergo an internal change of state.
>
> Since it isn't at all difficult to find -(Q)H- aorists with animate
> subjects it seems to me that trying to pin the prototypical patient
> label on -(Q)H- aorists is a lost cause. I have reservations about
> his statement on page 175 "in the table it can be observed that the
> passive forms have subjects which are prototypical patients or, which
> have a semantic feature in common with a the prototypical patient."
> The first part of this statement is really misleading since few if
> any of his examples meet all four criteria for a prototypical
> patient. Furthermore, under the categories "collective motion" and
> "body motion" the -(Q)H- aorists HGERQHN and hWRMHQHN are both
> agentive and animate which clearly disqualifies them from being
> prototypical patients. What sets HGERQHN and hWRMHQHN apart from
> sigmatic middles is #4, they undergo an internal change of state.
Moreover, as he notes (p. 171), its questionable whether there's any
semantic differentiation between HGROMHN and HGERQHN, while there may
possibly be a differentiation between EPIQOMHN and EPEISQHN.
Upon review and reflection, I think you're right about the inadequacy
of applying the notion of the "prototypical patient" to the question
of how and/or why there might be any differentiation between -QH-
"passive" and Sigmatic middle aorists. It seems to me that in this
chapter Allan may be attempting to explain a lot more than can readily
be explained, as why the -QH- forms emerged and gradually supplanted,
for the most part, older -H- forms. I rather think that the mapping of
middle "types" in his Figure 1 (p. 147) is accurate enough as a
representation of the data from the Homeric corpus, but he does note
overlapping usage and then there's the comparable diagram for
Classical Greek in his Figure 2 (p. 156) where it's clear that the
usage of -QH- forms has expanded considerably. I'd like to see a
comparable diagram for Koine usage of first and second centuries CE.
For an alternative perspective on sigmatic aorist middles and QH
middle-passives, see Egbert Bakker (Egbert J. Bakker, “Voice, Aspect
and Aktionsart: Middle and Passive in Ancient Greek” in Barbara A.
Fox, Paul J. Hopper, edd., Voice: Form and function (Typological
Studies in Language 27) (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins
Publishing Company, 1994), pp. 23-47.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
More information about the B-Greek
mailing list