[B-Greek] Ancient Greek Voice Forms
Carl Conrad
cwconrad2 at mac.com
Fri Apr 15 14:11:03 EDT 2011
On Apr 15, 2011, at 12:11 PM, Brian Abasciano wrote:
> Carl,
>
> Where do you line up with respect to Rutger Allan and his book THE MIDDLE
> VOICE IN ANCIENT GREEK: A Study in Polysemy? Do you and he basically share
> the same view, or is there significant difference?
>
> God bless,
>
> Brian Abasciano
Well, if you read through my AGNT Newsletter article, you might have noted
that I cited Rutger Allan's dissertation and his listing of categories of Middle
verbs. In my judgment Allan has laid the foundation for understanding middle-
voice forms and usage in Homer and in Classical Greek; the trends noted in
those earlier epochs of Greek linguistic history clearly continue to develop in
Hellenistic and later Greek. In particular, the θη (QH) forms in the aorist
and future tense-systems are found for only a couple of the standard middle
categories in Homeric texts but have come to embrace several more of the
middle categories in the Classical era, and the trend develops yet further in
the Hellenistic era, where forms like ἀπεκρίνατο (APEKRINATO) and
ἐγένετο (EGENETO) are being replaced by ἀπεκρίθη (APEKRIQH) and
ἐγενήθη (EGENHQH) respectively. There are a couple questions Allan
touches upon in his last chapter, such as conditions under which η (Η) and
θη (QH) forms of the same verb may appear, that seem to me open to
question. On the whole, however, I think that Rutger Allan's work can
and should be readily supplemented with data and exposition of the
continuing trends in the Koine Greek of the NT and other Hellenistic
authors. I am aware too of some work that's been done on further
developments of these trends in Byzantine and later Greek.
One curious item that I would just love to see investigated and explained
is the gradual process by which the verb εἶναι (EINAI) has been
transformed from a morphology that is fundamentally "active" in
the present εἰμί (EIMI) and imperfect ἦν (HN) with only a future
that is middle ἔσομαι (ESOMAI) to a morphology that is basically
middle: εἶμαι (EIMAI), ἤμην (HMHN), ἔσομαι (ESOMAI). Does
it association with γί(γ)νομαι (GI{G}NOMAI ἐγενόμην
EGENOMHN) have anything to do with this gradual change? I
don't know, but I'm very curious.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2011 21:02:56 -0400
> From: Carl Conrad <cwconrad2 at mac.com>
> Subject: [B-Greek] Ancient Greek Voice Forms
> To: B-Greek <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
> Message-ID: <EA96F0F9-8CD9-402E-B594-89D63564113F at mac.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252
>
> I have revised my web page on Ancient Greek Voice to include the following
> note
> and download link for an account of my views on the framework of the ancient
> Greek voice system that I wrote for the current issue of the AGNT
> Newsletter:
>
> "Ancient Greek Voice Forms: Categorizing and Making Sense of Them": in The
> AGNT Project Report?Q1 2011: PDF of the quarterly newsletter of the AGNT
> Project. This is a terse, very compact formulation of a very complex issue.
> The longer I have pondered the forms and usage of ancient Greek verbal
> voice, the more convinced I have become of the validity of the framework
> into which I think the data best fit, while at the same time the more
> cognizant I have grown of the complexity of the data hitherto accounted for
> by the dubious doctrine of "deponency."
>
> URL: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/GrkVc.html
>
> Carl W. Conrad
> Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
More information about the B-Greek
mailing list