[B-Greek] Question about 1st aorist middle indicative paradigm in Mounce's BBG
Carl Conrad
cwconrad2 at mac.com
Wed Mar 5 05:06:58 EST 2008
On Mar 4, 2008, at 7:26 PM, Matthew Blair wrote:
> Greetings all,
>
> I am currently reading through Ch. 22 of Mounce's BBG, which is a
> discussion
> of 1st aorist active/middle indicative form. For those not familiar
> with
> BBG, Mounce defers any discussion of the middle voice until Ch 25,
> and uses
> deponent verbs to show the paradigms. However, in his paradigm for
> 1st
> aorist active middle indicative (Section 23.18), Mounce uses LU* as
> the
> aorist active tense stem. In addition, the translation for each
> form in the
> paradigm is active voice (I loosed, You loosed, He/she/it loosed,
> etc.)
>
> Adding to my confusion is the fact that Mounce use LU* as the
> paradigmatic
> word for the 1st aorist active indicative form as well.
>
> So, I'm not sure I understand...this may be in part because I have
> only
> learned the form of the middle voice and not yet the meaning.
>
> I hope I have described the scenario well enough for you to
> understand my
> confusion.
I personally think (and have repeatedly said so) that the teaching of
ancient Greek voice is a disaster and that the reference works dealing
with it are far more confusing than helpful. The facts about Greek
voice are not so much unclear as is how those facts are put together
and explained. A short document that I put together a few years ago
("Active, Middle, and Passive: Understanding Ancient Greek Voice") was
intended as a pedagogical help for those first encountering Greek
voice usage. It is accessible for reading online or downloading at http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/Docs/UndAncGrkVc.pdf
or http://tinyurl.com/245k6z
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
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