[B-Greek] Active Middles and Middle Middles

Carl Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Thu Nov 6 05:57:14 EST 2008


On Nov 5, 2008, at 10:41 PM, Kenneth Litwak wrote:

> I'm searching for good examples of 1/2 Aorist verbs that are Middle  
> in form, not deponent, and
> 1. active in meaning
> 2. True middle
>
> For the "active in meaning," PROSLAMBANO looks like a good choice as  
> a 2 Aor Mid. Indicative.  For a true Middle, PERIBALLW looks like a  
> good candidate in the 2 Aor Mid Ind.  Are there some better  
> candidates? I'm excluding verbs that have a distinct meaning in the  
> Middle like ARCW.  Thanks.

I've read Randall's very practical note about learning the forms that  
are in use. If one is NOT going to pursue the proper way of learning  
Greek that he promotes but go along the traditional routes, then one  
needs to learn the principal parts of all irregular verbs (all those  
whose future, aorist, perfect, aorist "passive" forms are  
unpredictable from the lexical lemma) -- then one will know that  
MANQANW has a future MAQHSOMAI, that ERWTAW has a standard aorist  
HROMHN (more commonly used in earlier Greek) as well as the form  
HRWTHSA. But another point that's implicit in what Randall wrote in  
response to Ken's question is that if you're going to teach/learn  
Greek verbs analytically rather than conversationally, then you need  
to have a more functionally usable understanding of the voice system  
than what is conventionally taught; I've tried to point the way on my  
page http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/GrkVc.html -- I do honestly  
believe that whole notion of "deponency" as traditionally taught  
stands in the way of understanding what the middle-voice forms are and  
do.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)






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