Athematic second aorists and Voice

David Lim
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Re: Augment and Aspect

Post by David Lim »

MAubrey wrote:Rod Decker, I think, has talked about the relationship between the augment and the secondary endings as having a purely formal relationship (Temporal Deixis, 39-40). He might be able to say more about his view directly.
This reminds me of a few questions about morphology that I forgot to ask:
(1) Why does the aorist passive verb use the active ending?
(2) Why does the aorist passive participle use the "ντ" stem suffix rather than the "μεν" suffix?
δαυιδ λιμ
cwconrad
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Athematic second aorists and Voice

Post by cwconrad »

David Lim wrote:This reminds me of a few questions about morphology that I forgot to ask:
(1) Why does the aorist passive verb use the active ending?
(2) Why does the aorist passive participle use the "ντ" stem suffix rather than the "μεν" suffix?
This question really belongs in a new subforum, so I'm changing the subject-header.

This was one of the observations that first spurred me to think more seriously about the morphology and semantics of the ancient Greek voice system. One of the more "obvious" things to say about it is that these secondary endings involved are identical for the verb-forms that we call "athematic" or "nonthematic" actives (e.g. ἔβην, ἔβης, ἔβη; ἔγνων, ἔγνως, ἔγνω) and so-called "second passives (e.g. ἐβλάβην, ἐβλάβης, ἐβλάβη; ἐγράφη, κτλ.) are identical. These endings do not indicate the semantic voice of the verb-forms; they are simply nonthematic aorists. Most --not all, but most -- verbs that appear in these forms are intransitive (e.g. ἔβην, ἔστην), and of course these are the forms in which all traditionally-termed "aorist passives" in -ην/ης/η and -θην/θης/θη appear.

My view (and I doubt I'm the first to think of this) is that these were originally simply an aorist paradigm among others, but that in the course of time they came to be employed especially for the marked -- middle-passive aorist of what are traditionally called "deponent" verbs (I prefer to call them "middle" verbs): ἵσταμαι/ἔστην, φαίνομαι/ἔφάνην. My guess is that this type of aorist middle-passive -- especially with the formative element -θη- appended to a verb root -- grew alongside of the distinct "first" aorist "active" forms in -σα, so that there were clear oppositions between the active forms like ἔγραψα, ἔβλαψα, ἔθαψα and the middle-passive forms like ἐγράφθην/ἐγράφην, ἐβλάφθην/ἐβλάβην, ἐτάφην.

There's more on this on my web-page on ancient Greek voice: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/GrkVc.html; also accessible there is my compilation titled "Theta_Passive.pdf " (July 5, 2005) Extracts from Pierre Chantraine and Andrew Sihler on the origin of the aorist intransitive and “passive” verb forms.
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
David Lim
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Re: Athematic second aorists and Voice

Post by David Lim »

cwconrad wrote:There's more on this on my web-page on ancient Greek voice: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/GrkVc.html; also accessible there is my compilation titled "Theta_Passive.pdf " (July 5, 2005) Extracts from Pierre Chantraine and Andrew Sihler on the origin of the aorist intransitive and “passive” verb forms.
Thanks! I think I will need a long time to go over those materials since I am unfamiliar with most of it. But the last sentence in that pdf was funny: "The element -θη- itself is of enigmatic origin."
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cwconrad
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Re: Athematic second aorists and Voice

Post by cwconrad »

David Lim wrote:
cwconrad wrote:There's more on this on my web-page on ancient Greek voice: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/GrkVc.html; also accessible there is my compilation titled "Theta_Passive.pdf " (July 5, 2005) Extracts from Pierre Chantraine and Andrew Sihler on the origin of the aorist intransitive and “passive” verb forms.
Thanks! I think I will need a long time to go over those materials since I am unfamiliar with most of it. But the last sentence in that pdf was funny: "The element -θη- itself is of enigmatic origin."
It simply means that we don't know where it came from. It's present in the Homeric literature, but as yet there's no sign of it in the earlier Greek Linear B or in PIE. Cf. Chantraine (earlier in that PDF):
Chaintraine wrote:#190. — Ces aoristes en -θην sont déjà bien constitués dans la langue homérique, mais les documents mycéniens n’en présentent pas encore d’exemple jusqui’ ici.
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
Mark Lightman
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Re: Athematic second aorists and Voice

Post by Mark Lightman »

εἶπεν ὁ Δαυιδ ὅτι εἶπεν ὁ Κᾶρλος: "The element -θη- itself is of enigmatic origin."


Hi, David and Carl,

Kevin Riley has written about “the mists of [linguistic pre]history.”
ὁμίχλη τὸ παρελθόν.
My own misty speculation is that

λυεν θησομαι.
Ι will place myself up for ransoming.


became

λυθήσομαι.
I will get ransomed.


or, if you prefer, in the aorist, where the augment was originally a detached temporal adverb,

ε λυεν θημην.
In-the-past, I placed myself up for ransoming.


became

ἐλύθην.
I got ransomed.


On the basis of this speculation, I once proposed, and later that day rejected, the notion that all passives are really periphrastic middles. You never get saved, or even get killed, without setting yourself up to be in a posiiton to do.
cwconrad
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Re: Athematic second aorists and Voice

Post by cwconrad »

Mark Lightman wrote: My own misty speculation is that

λυεν θησομαι.
Ι will place myself up for ransoming.


became

λυθήσομαι.
I will get ransomed.


or, if you prefer, in the aorist, where the augment was originally a detached temporal adverb,

ε λυεν θημην.
In-the-past, I placed myself up for ransoming.


became

ἐλύθην.
I got ransomed.


On the basis of this speculation, I once proposed, and later that day rejected, the notion that all passives are really periphrastic middles. You never get saved, or even get killed, without setting yourself up to be in a posiiton to do.
οἴμοι Φώσφορε, Φώσφορε! "κρεῖττον," ὥς φασιν, "φώσφορον ἅπτειν ἢ τὸ σκότος βλασφημεῖν." ὅμως δὲ τῷ φωσφόρῳ οὐ χρὴ πάντως πιστεύειν. μέγας γὰρ ὁ κίνδυνος μή πως πλείονα καίηται.
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
Mark Lightman
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Joined: May 6th, 2011, 6:30 pm

Re: Athematic second aorists and Voice

Post by Mark Lightman »

Carl wrote: οἴμοι Φώσφορε, Φώσφορε! "κρεῖττον," ὥς φασιν, "φώσφορον ἅπτειν ἢ τὸ σκότος βλασφημεῖν." ὅμως δὲ τῷ φωσφόρῳ οὐ χρὴ πάντως πιστεύειν. μέγας γὰρ ὁ κίνδυνος μή πως πλείονα καίηται.
τὰ ἀληθῆ σὺ γράφεις, ὦ ἄριστε. κἀγὼ γὰρ οὐ πιστεύω ἑμαυτῷ περὶ τοῦ τῆς λαλίας ἐξηγήματος

On the other hand, didn't you once speculate that these θην, θης, θη, κτλ forms might have been related to τίθημι?
cwconrad
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Re: Athematic second aorists and Voice

Post by cwconrad »

Mark Lightman wrote:[On the other hand, didn't you once speculate that these θην, θης, θη, κτλ forms might have been related to τίθημι?
To the best of my recollection, I've never entertained such a notion. εἰ δὲ μή, εἶπον ἄν σοι. βέβαιον δὴ τοῦτό φημι· πάντως ἀθετίζω τὸ τιθέναι.
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
David Lim
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Joined: June 6th, 2011, 6:55 am

Re: Athematic second aorists and Voice

Post by David Lim »

cwconrad wrote:
Mark Lightman wrote:[On the other hand, didn't you once speculate that these θην, θης, θη, κτλ forms might have been related to τίθημι?
To the best of my recollection, I've never entertained such a notion. εἰ δὲ μή, εἶπον ἄν σοι. βέβαιον δὴ τοῦτό φημι· πάντως ἀθετίζω τὸ τιθέναι.
Just to clarify, τι εστιν αθετιζω και τι λεγεις βεβαιον και ου βεβαιως
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Mark Lightman
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Re: Athematic second aorists and Voice

Post by Mark Lightman »

David wrote:

cwconrad wrote:

Mark Lightman wrote:[On the other hand, didn't you once speculate that these θην, θης, θη, κτλ forms might have been related to τίθημι?


To the best of my recollection, I've never entertained such a notion. εἰ δὲ μή, εἶπον ἄν σοι. βέβαιον δὴ τοῦτό φημι· πάντως ἀθετίζω τὸ τιθέναι.

Just to clarify, τι εστιν αθετιζω και τι λεγεις βεβαιον και ου βεβαιως
χαίροις Δαυιδ!

Good questions. ἀθετίζω/ἀθετέω is "I reject as spurious," which is a good word to know when talking about Markos. βεβαιως would also work here, and you could ask the writer if he choose βέβαιον over βεβαιως for semantic or for euphonic reasons.
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