[B-Greek] Ancient Greek Voice Forms
Mark Lightman
lightmanmark at yahoo.com
Fri Apr 15 22:29:34 EDT 2011
What are some verbs that do NOT participate in subject-affectedness. What would
a sentence look like where the subject is NOT involved in the action?
Mark L
FWSFOROS MARKOS
________________________________
From: Carl Conrad <cwconrad2 at mac.com>
To: Mark Lightman <lightmanmark at yahoo.com>
Cc: B-Greek B-Greek <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Fri, April 15, 2011 7:24:57 PM
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Ancient Greek Voice Forms
On Apr 15, 2011, at 8:21 PM, Mark Lightman wrote:
> Hi, Carl,
>
> I want to make sure I understand what you and Rutger Allan are saying.
>
> Are you saying that verbs with "deponent" futures, like AKOUSOMAI, PIOUMAI,
> ESSOMAI, etc, have this general middle force, what you call "subject focus,"
> even in the other tenses, though in those tenses they are just not marked for
> this "subject focus"?
That sounds pretty vague; I don't think I've discussed that in anything that
I've written recently about middle verbs. It is true, however,
that there are several verbs that regularly have futures that are middle:
LAMBANW/LH(M)YOMAI, MANQANW/MAQHSOMAI, AKOUW/
AKOUSOMAI, etc.. The "active" morphology is the default or unmarked
form for voice, while the middle forms are marked for subject-
affectedness. The fact that these verbs have middle futures does seem to
indicate that the future forms of these verbs are felt to mark the involvement
of the subject in the action or process contemplated as taking place in the
future. Allan discusses these future middles in Chapter 5 of his book,
p. 178 and refers to Rijksbaron's _Syntax and Semantics of the Verb in
Classical Greek)_, §46.2, pp. 156ff, if you're really interested in following
up on this.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
> ________________________________
> From: Carl Conrad <cwconrad2 at mac.com>
> To: Brian Abasciano <bvabasciano at gmail.com>
> Cc: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
> Sent: Fri, April 15, 2011 12:11:03 PM
> Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Ancient Greek Voice Forms
>
>
> 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)
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