[B-Greek] Older grammars and categorization of Voices
Carl Conrad
cwconrad2 at mac.com
Wed May 5 14:48:31 EDT 2010
On May 5, 2010, at 10:36 AM, Vasile Stancu wrote:
> I wonder if grammars of older generations of English could be helpful in
> understanding some specific aspects related to ancient Greek. I just noticed
> that newer grammar textbooks of my language (Romanian) describe the verb
> voices as being just two, i.e., active and passive. When I studied grammar
> at school (1960s), I was taught that there were three voices: active,
> passive and reflexive.
>
> A texbook of Romanian grammar published in 1966 by the Romanian Academy
> identifies the three voices and says, in relation with the reflexive voice:
> "This category plays the role which in some languages (old greek, for
> instance) is played by the middle voice. This voice shows that the subject
> is doing the action with high intensity/interest, that the action he/she is
> doing is in his/her own interest". Several examples and explanations are
> then given.
>
> Another texbook of Romanian grammar published in 2001 by a group of authors
> says that there are two voices: active and passive. Then a category of
> "pronominal verbs" (those that used to go under the classification of
> "reflexive voice") is defined and the texbook just shows how they are to be
> conjugated - no additional explanations regarding special meaning, role,
> etc.
>
> The analogy between the Greek middle voice and the Romanian reflexive voice
> is also endorsed by various Romanian texbooks of Greek grammar. For
> instance, a Greek grammar textbook published in 1872 says, regarding middle
> voice: "As for voices, Greek has, besides the active and the passive, the
> middle voice which somewhat holds the middle between the active and the
> passive, and its significance belongs to the one as well as to the other. It
> expresses an action that the subject does and receives at the same time, an
> action which he excerts upon himself or a part of himself, as we also say in
> Romanian 'he washes himself', 'he washes himself on hands' (Vasile's note:
> of course, this rendering is not in full compliance with correct English -
> however, for the sake of exemplification, please accept the literal
> translation...), with passive form and active meaning. Thus, the middle
> voice of the Greeks corresponds to our reflexive verbs".
>
> As I said, I wonder if older English has such 'tools' that might help in
> better understanding old Greek. As for me, when I first learned about the
> Greek middle voice, there was no surprise: it was just the Romanian
> reflexive. And even its formation in Greek: we have it in Romanian formed by
> means of reflexive pronouns, and when I see a -μαι -MAI in Greek, I tend to
> associate it intuitively with some Greek reflexive noun. I am not aware of
> any such relationship having been demonstrated or at least suggested, but
> perhaps some others would agree that this is not entirely 'fanciful'.
For what it's worth, I think your older Romanian grammarians are
probably much more helpful to those wanting to understand ancient Greek
middle-voice usage. I have never seen anything comparable to that threefold
classification of verbs as active, passive, and reflexive. But Romanian belongs
among the Romance languages which, as a group, derive from late Latin, in
which the reflexive verbs tended increasingly to replace the older Latin
middle-voice forms.
Although English certainly has reflexive verbs ("do I make myself clear?"),
they don't really constitute a large enough group to constitute a separate
category. It seems to me that much more common in English is a distinction
between transitive active verbs ("I'll drive my Ford into the dealer", "I'll walk
my dog around the block") and intransitive verbs that would be middle in Greek
("I'll drive to town tomorrow", "I'll walk around the block") or there are
verbs like "seat" (cause to sit) and "lay" (put down) with cognate intransitive
counterparts like "sit" and "lie", respectively.
I believe that very much of the difficulty English-speaking students have in
mastering ancient Greek voice usages derives from the fact that English does
NOT -- warning: "G" word ahead -- 'GRAMMATICALIZE' subject-intensitivity
in the verb. Consequently English speakers have no difficulty (ordinarily) in
speaking or writing English correctly in terms of verb morphology, but they
find it extremely difficult to correlate ancient Greek voice usage with ordinary
English verb usage.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
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