Semantic differences between Aorist/Future Middle & Passive?

David M. Miller
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Semantic differences between Aorist/Future Middle & Passive?

Post by David M. Miller »

I was explaining my understanding of Carl Conrad's model of Greek voice* to a friend, who responded with some counter-examples that appear to fit the traditional model better.

(*E.g., http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/d ... 11_002.pdf; see also Michael Palmer's discussion http://greek-language.com/grammar/21.html)

Two examples:
(1) γινώσκω: Every Future Middle occurrence of γινώσκω in the NT is subject-focused (which is to be expected with a verb of cognition) or, according to the traditional model, deponent. Every Future Passive occurrence of γινώσκω in the NT is passive in meaning. The same pattern seems to hold for the LXX as well. Here is the example my friend sent me:

Mark 4:13 Καὶ λέγει αὐτοῖς• οὐκ οἴδατε τὴν παραβολὴν ταύτην, καὶ πῶς πάσας τὰς παραβολὰς γνώσεσθε;
Matthew 10:26 Μὴ οὖν φοβηθῆτε αὐτούς• * οὐδὲν γάρ ἐστιν κεκαλυμμένον ὃ οὐκ ἀποκαλυφθήσεται καὶ κρυπτὸν ὃ οὐ γνωσθήσεται.

(2) The same pattern appears with ἀκούω:

Acts 17:32 Ἀκούσαντες δὲ ἀνάστασιν νεκρῶν οἱ μὲν ἐχλεύαζον, οἱ δὲ εἶπαν• ἀκουσόμεθά σου περὶ τούτου καὶ πάλιν.
Luke 12:3 ἀνθ᾽ ὧν ὅσα ἐν τῇ σκοτίᾳ εἴπατε ἐν τῷ φωτὶ ἀκουσθήσεται, καὶ ὃ πρὸς τὸ οὖς ἐλαλήσατε ἐν τοῖς ταμείοις κηρυχθήσεται ἐπὶ τῶν δωμάτων.

My question: Even if we grant that aorist and future middle forms are subject-focused rather than deponent, is there (sometimes?) a semantic difference that maps onto the distinction between middle and passive forms when both forms occur in the same verb in the aorist or future?

I skimmed Rutger Allan's dissertation quickly and was surprised to see that he argues for a semantic distinction between sigmatic middle aorists (= 1st Aorist Middle forms) and θ(η) Aorists (Aorist Passive forms):
"Sigmatic middle aorists with passive meaning do not exist in historical Greek" (111 n. 269).
(On the other hand, "root and thematic aorists" (e.g. 2nd aorist middle forms) do occur with both middle and passive meanings (128; 131 n. 309).
"[T]he passive aorist marks that the subject is, or is at least similar to, a prototypical patient. By contrast, the subject of the sigmatic middle aorist is similar to a prototypical agent." (186)
"The contrast between the middle and the passive future is to be explained differently for each individual verb." (150)
If Allan is correct--and I haven't noticed discussion of this aspect of his argument on this forum--the system is way more complicated than I had imagined, and I am left wondering (again) how best to explain Greek voice to 1st year Greek students. Allan is, of course, describing Classical Greek, but his argument appears to explain the two examples above. Is the answer that we must know each verb or can we generalize in the cases when both middle and passive forms appear in the aorist or future?
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Re: Semantic differences between Aorist/Future Middle & Pass

Post by MAubrey »

David M. Miller wrote:I was explaining my understanding of Carl Conrad's model of Greek voice* to a friend, who responded with some counter-examples that appear to fit the traditional model better.
Is there a particular reason why he thinks these fit the traditional model better? This looks fairly predictable to me.

Deponency is rarely a good answer to any grammatical problem. It's an "I have no idea answer"--an escape that provides no explanation. There is such thing as form-meaning mismatches, of course, but they are extremely rare and generally unsatisfying..
David M. Miller wrote:My question: Even if we grant that aorist and future middle forms are subject-focused rather than deponent, is there (sometimes?) a semantic difference that maps onto the distinction between middle and passive forms when both forms occur in the same verb in the aorist or future?
Well the answer is to that precisely what's in the quote from Allan below.
David M. Miller wrote:If Allan is correct--and I haven't noticed discussion of this aspect of his argument on this forum--the system is way more complicated than I had imagined, and I am left wondering (again) how best to explain Greek voice to 1st year Greek students. Allan is, of course, describing Classical Greek, but his argument appears to explain the two examples above. Is the answer that we must know each verb or can we generalize in the cases when both middle and passive forms appear in the aorist or future?
I'm not entirely sure that you need to explain this rather narrow detail to first year students.
Perhaps at some point, it maybe useful to bring out Allan's chart that shows the distribution of usage between the sigmatic middle and the -θη middle forms and how the latter are grouped over on one end and the former are grouped over at the other end.
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Re: Semantic differences between Aorist/Future Middle & Pass

Post by David M. Miller »

Thanks for your reply, Mike. Let me try to clarify. My question is not primarily concerned with deponency, but with the possibility of meaningful morphological distinctions within the larger subject-focused category.

My standard explanation of the Aorist and Future Middle and Passive forms--following Carl Conrad--is that by the Koine period they have come to be two different ways of saying the same thing, much like 1st and 2nd aorist patterns. The synonymous ἐγενόμην and ἐγενήθην are a case in point. Thus, an aorist middle may come out 'passive' in English translation, and an aorist passive may be rendered best by another subject-focused meaning. It all depends on the word and the context (e.g., the presence or absence of ὑπό, etc.).

However, the future middle of γινώσκω is *always* non-passive in meaning, and the future passive of γινώσκω is always passive in meaning; the future middle of ἀκούω is always non-passive in meaning, while the future passive of ἀκούω is always passive in meaning. Do these examples suggest that my standard explanation needs to be qualified?
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Re: Semantic differences between Aorist/Future Middle & Pass

Post by MAubrey »

David M. Miller wrote:Thanks for your reply, Mike. Let me try to clarify. My question is not primarily concerned with deponency, but with the possibility of meaningful morphological distinctions within the larger subject-focused category.
Right. I just added that bit for speaking with your friend.
David M. Miller wrote:My standard explanation of the Aorist and Future Middle and Passive forms--following Carl Conrad--is that by the Koine period they have come to be two different ways of saying the same thing, much like 1st and 2nd aorist patterns. The synonymous ἐγενόμην and ἐγενήθην are a case in point. Thus, an aorist middle may come out 'passive' in English translation, and an aorist passive may be rendered best by another subject-focused meaning. It all depends on the word and the context (e.g., the presence or absence of ὑπό, etc.).

However, the future middle of γινώσκω is *always* non-passive in meaning, and the future passive of γινώσκω is always passive in meaning; the future middle of ἀκούω is always non-passive in meaning, while the future passive of ἀκούω is always passive in meaning. Do these examples suggest that my standard explanation needs to be qualified?
I would say so. I can't speak for Carl, though I expect he'll pop in here at some point, but I would suggest the sigmatic middle and -θη middles are not synonymous. The forms ἐγενόμην and ἐγενήθην are a little deceptive on this point since you cannot passivize this verb to begin with. Most generally view the sigmatic middle and -θη middle as representing varying degrees of subject affectedness, where -θη is chosen when a speaker wants to mark that higher degree of affectedness. And that explanation is probably the simplest way of dealing with this question for 1st year students.

With that said, I personally don't think subject affectedness is a sufficient explanation of the difference.. It is a piece of the puzzle, but only a piece. That is, the system is significantly more complicated. When I've taught middle voice (or more accurately, when I've taught cross-linguistic realizations of voice systems), I have suggested that transitivity is the better approach on the basis of my wife's research*. And by transitivity, I do not simply that a verb takes an object or not. I'm talking about transitivity as a scalar concept (to some degree in the sense described by Hopper and Thompson [1980], though there are a number of problems with their conceptualization).

Clauses that are more transitive are/have...
  • Two or more participants
    Dynamic rather than static
    Telic rather than atelic
    Punctual rather than non-punctual
    A volitional rather than non-volitional subject
    Affirmative rather than negative
    Realis rather than irealis (i.e. indicative rather than non-indicative)
    Agentative rather than non-agentative subject
    A highly affected object
    A distinct/individuated object.
And we can use these features for distinguishing between the two aorist/future middle forms. Consider Genesis 1:3
Gen 1:3 wrote:καὶ εἶπεν ὁ θεός Γενηθήτω φῶς. καὶ ἐγένετο φῶς.
The first instance of γίνομαι gets a -θη because:

(1) it is non-indicative and thus irrealis
(2) if we conceive a telicity also as a scalar concept, then there is only a potential endpoint that has not yet been realized (i.e. telicity and realis are closely linked).

Conversely, the second instance, ἐγένετο:

(1) is in the indicative and thus involves realis rather than irealis
(2) has an endpoint that is fully realized and thus the light is totally affected.

The second middle form is for these reasons conceived of as more transitive than the first middle form.

* Hopefully I won't get in trouble with my wife for this...since these ideas are much of the bulk of her thesis which will be completed in the next month.
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Re: Semantic differences between Aorist/Future Middle & Pass

Post by cwconrad »

David M. Miller wrote:Thanks for your reply, Mike. Let me try to clarify. My question is not primarily concerned with deponency, but with the possibility of meaningful morphological distinctions within the larger subject-focused category.

My standard explanation of the Aorist and Future Middle and Passive forms--following Carl Conrad--is that by the Koine period they have come to be two different ways of saying the same thing, much like 1st and 2nd aorist patterns. The synonymous ἐγενόμην and ἐγενήθην are a case in point. Thus, an aorist middle may come out 'passive' in English translation, and an aorist passive may be rendered best by another subject-focused meaning. It all depends on the word and the context (e.g., the presence or absence of ὑπό, etc.).

However, the future middle of γινώσκω is *always* non-passive in meaning, and the future passive of γινώσκω is always passive in meaning; the future middle of ἀκούω is always non-passive in meaning, while the future passive of ἀκούω is always passive in meaning. Do these examples suggest that my standard explanation needs to be qualified?
Let me say first of all that the views on "voice" forms and usage -- particularly on "middle/passive" forms and usage, are views that I espouse but that haven't originated with me; they've been germinating in the past couple of decades and I do think that there are now the bare beginnings of an emerging consensus. Nevertheless the facts and the process of development from earlier to later correlations between forms and usages are sufficiently complex that it is difficult to produce a complete and uniform "docrtrine of diathesis" (I'd rather use the word "diathesis" than "voice").

Secondly, I do think that those verbs ordinarily called "irregular", the verbs whose principal parts are not predictable from the lemma, need to be known in the manner that one knows personalities, just as Humpty Dumpty warned Alice. What has been said about the semantic distinction between γνώσομαι and γνωσθήσομαι is unquestionably true. Rutger Allan himself devotes several pages to a distinction of usage between φανοῦμαι and φανήσομαι. It is my impression (I haven't investigated the matter sufficiently to say anything definite about this) that the transition from aorist middle forms in -όμην and aorist passives in -θην took place earlier and more thoroughly than the transition from future middle forms in -σομαι and future passives in -θήσομαι. I think, however, that transitivity is a contributing factor here: a transitive verb with a default/active or causative form in -ω or -ῶ (inf. -ειν or εῖν will have a -θη- form that is semantically passive. But each irregular verb is unique and has undergone its own transitions of form and meaning in keeping with its currency in everyday usage.

I've been giving more thought recently to the question of how best to present as clear as possible an account of ancient Greek verbal diathesis in the classroom. I might initiate a thread on this under "Teaching and Learning." At present, I think that Randall is right: one encounters and learns the verbs in oral communication in the classroom or (more traditionally) in literary texts and the explanations are secondary. The explanations, however, must, I think, include: a fundamental distinction between the default morphoparadigms (διάθεσις κοινή) and the self-affected verbal morphoparadigms (διάθεσις ἑαυτική). I think that the διάθεσις ἑαυτική can be explained in terms of reflexive usages and (English/or?) verbs like "expand", "contract", "ripen", "rot", "blush", etc. Then the full set of subject-affected subcategories should be introduced and illustrated with Greek verbs in each of those categories as set forth in Allan's Middle Voice in Ancient Greek on pp. 58-79. At some point it will be necessary to clarify the terminology being employed: why "active" is a misleading term when applied either to the default morphoparadigm or to semantic function, why "deponent" only obfuscates any account of voice forms and usage, etc.
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

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Re: Semantic differences between Aorist/Future Middle & Pass

Post by cwconrad »

MAubrey wrote:
David M. Miller wrote:Thanks for your reply, Mike. Let me try to clarify. My question is not primarily concerned with deponency, but with the possibility of meaningful morphological distinctions within the larger subject-focused category.
Right. I just added that bit for speaking with your friend.
David M. Miller wrote:My standard explanation of the Aorist and Future Middle and Passive forms--following Carl Conrad--is that by the Koine period they have come to be two different ways of saying the same thing, much like 1st and 2nd aorist patterns. The synonymous ἐγενόμην and ἐγενήθην are a case in point. Thus, an aorist middle may come out 'passive' in English translation, and an aorist passive may be rendered best by another subject-focused meaning. It all depends on the word and the context (e.g., the presence or absence of ὑπό, etc.).

However, the future middle of γινώσκω is *always* non-passive in meaning, and the future passive of γινώσκω is always passive in meaning; the future middle of ἀκούω is always non-passive in meaning, while the future passive of ἀκούω is always passive in meaning. Do these examples suggest that my standard explanation needs to be qualified?
I would say so. I can't speak for Carl, though I expect he'll pop in here at some point, but I would suggest the sigmatic middle and -θη middles are not synonymous. The forms ἐγενόμην and ἐγενήθην are a little deceptive on this point since you cannot passivize this verb to begin with. Most generally view the sigmatic middle and -θη middle as representing varying degrees of subject affectedness, where -θη is chosen when a speaker wants to mark that higher degree of affectedness. And that explanation is probably the simplest way of dealing with this question for 1st year students.

With that said, I personally don't think subject affectedness is a sufficient explanation of the difference.. It is a piece of the puzzle, but only a piece. That is, the system is significantly more complicated. When I've taught middle voice (or more accurately, when I've taught cross-linguistic realizations of voice systems), I have suggested that transitivity is the better approach on the basis of my wife's research*. And by transitivity, I do not simply that a verb takes an object or not. I'm talking about transitivity as a scalar concept (to some degree in the sense described by Hopper and Thompson [1980], though there are a number of problems with their conceptualization).

Clauses that are more transitive are/have...
  • Two or more participants
    Dynamic rather than static
    Telic rather than atelic
    Punctual rather than non-punctual
    A volitional rather than non-volitional subject
    Affirmative rather than negative
    Realis rather than irealis (i.e. indicative rather than non-indicative)
    Agentative rather than non-agentative subject
    A highly affected object
    A distinct/individuated object.
And we can use these features for distinguishing between the two aorist/future middle forms. Consider Genesis 1:3
Gen 1:3 wrote:καὶ εἶπεν ὁ θεός Γενηθήτω φῶς. καὶ ἐγένετο φῶς.
The first instance of γίνομαι gets a -θη because:

(1) it is non-indicative and thus irrealis
(2) if we conceive a telicity also as a scalar concept, then there is only a potential endpoint that has not yet been realized (i.e. telicity and realis are closely linked).

Conversely, the second instance, ἐγένετο:

(1) is in the indicative and thus involves realis rather than irealis
(2) has an endpoint that is fully realized and thus the light is totally affected.

The second middle form is for these reasons conceived of as more transitive than the first middle form.

* Hopefully I won't get in trouble with my wife for this...since these ideas are much of the bulk of her thesis which will be completed in the next month.
There's an awful lot in Mike's statement here cited; I'm not sure what my comment is most specifically directed at. I'm skeptical about some of what Mike has written, especially regarding forms of γίνομαι. I've noted in my response of yesterday that I think there is a significant difference between aorist/future middle and aorist/future passive forms of verbs that are fundamentally transitive, but I am unconvinced that this is generally the case with intransitive middle verbs. I don't believe that there's any significant semantic difference between ἐγένετο and ἐγενήθη -- nor between ἀπεκρίνατο and ἀπεκρίθη. I'd like to hear arguments about how γενηθήσεται differs in meaning from γενήσεται. On the other hand, I think that ἐστάθη may serve in one instance as a passive of ἵστημι but that it's more often an alternative form of ἔστη, i.e., the aorist middle of ἵσταμαι. Over the course of several centuries the -θη- forms gradually supplanted the aorist middle forms, but the transition was clearly slower in the "irregular" verbs in common everyday use.
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

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Re: Semantic differences between Aorist/Future Middle & Pass

Post by MAubrey »

cwconrad wrote:There's an awful lot in Mike's statement here cited; I'm not sure what my comment is most specifically directed at. I'm skeptical about some of what Mike has written, especially regarding forms of γίνομαι. I've noted in my response of yesterday that I think there is a significant difference between aorist/future middle and aorist/future passive forms of verbs that are fundamentally transitive, but I am unconvinced that this is generally the case with intransitive middle verbs. I don't believe that there's any significant semantic difference between ἐγένετο and ἐγενήθη -- nor between ἀπεκρίνατο and ἀπεκρίθη. I'd like to hear arguments about how γενηθήσεται differs in meaning from γενήσεται. On the other hand, I think that ἐστάθη may serve in one instance as a passive of ἵστημι but that it's more often an alternative form of ἔστη, i.e., the aorist middle of ἵσταμαι. Over the course of several centuries the -θη- forms gradually supplanted the aorist middle forms, but the transition was clearly slower in the "irregular" verbs in common everyday use.
Well, I find it striking, Carl, that you're skepticism is really only realized in this statement as "I don't believe that there's any significant semantic difference between ἐγένετο and ἐγενήθη -- nor between ἀπεκρίνατο and ἀπεκρίθη."

I find it striking, because I agree. there is most certainly not any significant difference at all. There are very, very tiny difference and little more than that, differences that amount to little more than how a speaker/author at a particular moment in time made a subconscious judgment about one form over another and they're certainly not propositional in nature. Differences are most easy to comment on when the same author chooses distinct forms in close proximity. Why did these two authors choose the middle vs. the active+reflexive below? I have no idea.
Psalm 34:14 ὡς πλησίον, ὡς ἀδελφὸν ἡμέτερον, οὕτως εὐηρέστουν, ὡς πενθῶν καὶ σκυθρωπάζων, οὕτως ἐταπεινούμην
Matt 18:4 ὅστις οὖν ταπεινώσει ἑαυτὸν ὡς τὸ παιδίον τοῦτο οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ μείζων ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ τῶν οὐρανῶν
I don't presume to be that clever. Tokens of the different forms in different authors are impossible for me to comment on because there are too many other variables--dialect & idiolect for one (has one person's internal grammar shifted on the preferred form before another person?) Sociolinguistic issues such as register (Do the upper class of society view this slow shift toward -θη as representing the decay of their language and generally tried to avoid it in writing while subconsciously using it in their everyday speech?). In any case, I'm at a loss to find any instances of γενηθήσεται other than a single instance in Plato's Paremenides, so that don't really help me look at truly contrastive examples (If you know any, I would be happy to comment).

Looking at ἀπεκρίνατο and ἀπεκρίθη, I can see immediately, the Josephus never uses the -θη form at all. So there's a dialect/idiolect difference--or at least, whoever cleaned up his Greek perhaps viewed the -θη form as lower class. At the same time, at least for the Koine texts I have available in Logos, it is the -θη that is invariably used in the aorist subjunctive (=irealis = less transitive). The same is true of the imperative, save one instance in Aesop (Greek Ahiqar) in the Pseudepigrapha. With participles, Philo uses both forms, but never in close enough proximity for me to comment, but every other author is perfectly consistent in either using only one form or the other. In the indicative, this is also generally true, aside for the rare appearances of the sigmatic middle form (other than in Josephus) in 1 Chron 10:13, Ez 9:11, Acts 3:12, John 5:17, 19, and Letter of Aristeas 265, there is no actual contrast to speak of. Now, if you have actual instances of a contrast in usage in close proximity where it is clear that a particular author made an explicit choice of one form and then directly following made the exact opposite choice as with the Genesis 1:3 examples, I would absolutely love to take a look at them. The problem is that they're hard to find.
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Re: Semantic differences between Aorist/Future Middle & Pass

Post by cwconrad »

MAubrey wrote:Well, I find it striking, Carl, that you're skepticism is really only realized in this statement as "I don't believe that there's any significant semantic difference between ἐγένετο and ἐγενήθη -- nor between ἀπεκρίνατο and ἀπεκρίθη."
Mike, I thought you wrote previously that "I would suggest the sigmatic middle and -θη middles are not synonymous." But ἀπεκρίνατο is sigmatic aorist and ἀπεκριθη is, I think, what you're calling the θη middle. Perhaps you didn't write what you meant. I would agree that Atticists are likely to avoid the θη aorists of middle verbs if the authors of the 5th and 4th centuries didn't use them.
MAubrey wrote:Tokens of the different forms in different authors are impossible for me to comment on because there are too many other variables--dialect & idiolect for one (has one person's internal grammar shifted on the preferred form before another person?) Sociolinguistic issues such as register (Do the upper class of society view this slow shift toward -θη as representing the decay of their language and generally tried to avoid it in writing while subconsciously using it in their everyday speech?). In any case, I'm at a loss to find any instances of γενηθήσεται other than a single instance in Plato's Paremenides, so that don't really help me look at truly contrastive examples (If you know any, I would be happy to comment).
Well, I do indeed think that the shift to θη forms progressed more slowly in the future tenses.
MAubrey wrote:Looking at ἀπεκρίνατο and ἀπεκρίθη, I can see immediately, the Josephus never uses the -θη form at all. So there's a dialect/idiolect difference--or at least, whoever cleaned up his Greek perhaps viewed the -θη form as lower class.


I think that Atticism is probably the significant factor here.
MAubrey wrote:At the same time, at least for the Koine texts I have available in Logos, it is the -θη that is invariably used in the aorist subjunctive (=irealis = less transitive). The same is true of the imperative, save one instance in Aesop (Greek Ahiqar) in the Pseudepigrapha. With participles, Philo uses both forms, but never in close enough proximity for me to comment, but every other author is perfectly consistent in either using only one form or the other. In the indicative, this is also generally true, aside for the rare appearances of the sigmatic middle form (other than in Josephus) in 1 Chron 10:13, Ez 9:11, Acts 3:12, John 5:17, 19, and Letter of Aristeas 265, there is no actual contrast to speak of. Now, if you have actual instances of a contrast in usage in close proximity where it is clear that a particular author made an explicit choice of one form and then directly following made the exact opposite choice as with the Genesis 1:3 examples, I would absolutely love to take a look at them. The problem is that they're hard to find.
It's unclear to me whether you're making a general statement, or whether you're talking specifically about ἀποκρινασθαι vs. ἀποκριθῆναι, or what. I was still perplexed by your earlier citation of Gen 1:3 καὶ εἶπεν ὁ θεός Γενηθήτω φῶς. καὶ ἐγένετο φῶς,where the θη 3 sg. imperative is followed by a 3 sg. middle indicative of the same verb. I may have misunderstood this latest statement cited immediately above,but I went back and checked aorist subjunctive and imperative forms for γίνομαι. What I found in my Accordance search was interesting: 9 aorist imperatives: 1 middle γενέσθω; 8 passive (1 γενήθητε, 7 γενηθήτω; I found 62 aorist subjunctive forms in the GNT, 61 aorist Middle subjunctive forms, 1 θη subjunctive form. I remain skeptical about a suggested semantic distinction between the imperative γενηθήτω and the immediately ensuing indicative ἐγένετο. For 3 sg. aorist indicative forms I found a total of 214 forms, 202 ἐγένετο, 12 ἐγενήθη.

I would guess that we're dealing with the same sort of concurrence as we see with second-aorists conjugated with alpha: the alpha forms are seen in some verbs and in some persons and numbers more frequently than in others.
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

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Re: Semantic differences between Aorist/Future Middle & Pass

Post by Stephen Carlson »

What can we say about the diachronic development of the distribution of forms? When one form is advancing and the other is retreating, would this imply, at least on the margin, that there isfree variation (if not synonymy)? Or should one be looking at register or regional variations? Could there be a change in markedness (e.g., the aorist passive used to be marked for change of state and the aorist middle, but then the aorist middle became marked for volition and the aorist passive unmarked)?
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Re: Semantic differences between Aorist/Future Middle & Pass

Post by cwconrad »

Stephen Carlson wrote:What can we say about the diachronic development of the distribution of forms? When one form is advancing and the other is retreating, would this imply, at least on the margin, that there is free variation (if not synonymy)? Or should one be looking at register or regional variations? Could there be a change in markedness (e.g., the aorist passive used to be marked for change of state and the aorist middle, but then the aorist middle became marked for volition and the aorist passive unmarked)?
I've posted on my web-site images of Rutger Allan's two diagrams illustrating the distribution of θη morphoparadigms in the Homeric era (http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/P ... idDist.png) and in the Classical era (http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/P ... idDist.png). They show the expansion of the θη forms into additional categories beyond the two in which they are commonly found in the Homeric era and they show that the θη forms have begun to appear sporadically in several others middle categories, the two exceptions being Direct Reflexives (e.g. the common grooming actions such as λούομαι) and the Indirect Reflexives. Transitivity is a key factor here: the θη forms may be expected to carry passive semantic force for transitive middle verbs that take a direct object (ἰάομαι "heal" has ἰαθήσομαι and ἰαθήσονται in passive sense). I've not done extensive research into the extent to which such verbs may be used in θη forms in Biblical Greek texts, but I have noted that κτάομαι, one of the indirect reflexives, ordinarily has a future κτήσονται in the LXX, but in three instances we find κτηθήσονται.

I think that we'd need a sizable corpus to investigate register and regional variations; the GNT certainly isn't adeqate, but the LXX is much more extensive (and I would guess that the texts we have for it are to be dated later than our GNT texts). I think that one factor here is the extent to which a verb is common in everyday use. ἀγαλλιάομαι is a middle verb, as is perfectly clear from the counts in the LXX (71 instances of the middle, only one active form ἠγαλλίασεν (in the Pr Man 9:47); in the GNT there's one active form, a citation of the verse from the Prayer of Manasses and then there's ἀγαλλιῶμεν, a subjunctive form in Rev. 19:7; there are 8 middle forms, and then there's a θη aorist infinitive, ἀγαλλιαθῆναι, in john 5:35. This is clearly a mental process middle.

It would seem that θη futures supplanting futures in μαι/σαι/ται κτλ. proceeds later than θη aorists supplanting aorists in μην/σο/το κτλ. I remain skeptical of any semantic distinction between forms of γενέσθαι/γενηθῆναι. On the other hand, I think that transitivity is the primary significant factor in distinguishing θη forms with a passive sense from -μην/σο/το forms with a reflexive sense.
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

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