[B-Greek] Middle voice and subject-affectedness
Carl Conrad
cwconrad2 at mac.com
Tue Mar 8 08:13:16 EST 2011
On Mar 8, 2011, at 7:49 AM, Mark Lightman wrote:
> Hi Carl,
>
> On a slightly unrelated note, do you think that, in this passage from Euripides,
> for example, BOULOMAI is more "subject intensive" than QELW? How would you
> falsify that?
This is not "slightly" but totally unrelated to the previous question, so I'll
change the subject-header and delete the prior thread of messages.
Text: λέξαι θέλω σοι πρὶν θανεῖν ἃ βούλομαι.
(LEXAI QELW SOI PRIN QANEIN hA BOULOMAI)
The understanding of ancient Greek voice morphology and usage to which
I subscribe holds that the active forms such as QELW and, let's say, BAINW,
are UNmarked for subject-affectedness, while the middle forms such as
BOULOMAI and, let's say, POREUOMAI are MARKED for subject-
affectedness.
Rutger Allan in his dissertation has a good deal to say about this;
(accesible as PDF file at http://dare.uva.nl/en/record/108528
or in print form: The Middle Voice in Ancient Greek: A Study of Polysemy
by Rutger J. Allan Hardcover, J C Gieben, ISBN 9050633684 (90-5063-368-4)
there certainly are subject-affected verbs that don't show the
middle forms marking them as intensive. One that I find interesting is
ἐγειρομαι which is regularly middle in the intransitive sense "rise up"
or "wake up" but active in the causative sense "raise up" or "awaken."
And yet it's used in the active form in the intransitive sense several times
in the GNT, both sg. and pl. "Get up on your feet!"
But if your question was intended to elicit an opinion on whether
the subject-affectedness implies something about a semantic
difference between QELW and BOULOMAI, all I can say is
that I doubt it. The "active" voice really doesn't mark verbs
with respect to activity or passivity; it is a catch-all form for
most verbs; the middle-passive forms are the differentiated ones.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
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