[B-Greek] Middle sense for separate Passive form

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Thu Mar 22 08:35:21 EST 2007


A favorite passage from Lewis Carroll has been cited several times  
here in recent days. Here's the passage in its larger context as I  
first used it several years ago in my class handout of Principal  
Parts of Classical Greek Verbs:

“When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone,  
“it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."
“The question is,” said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so  
many different things.”
“The question is,” said, Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master --  
that's all!”
Alice was too much puzzled to say anything;  so after a minute Humpty  
Dumpty began again.  “They've a temper, some of them -- particularly  
verbs:  they're the proudest — adjectives you can do anything with,  
but verbs — ;  however, I can manage the whole lot of them!   
Impenetrability! That's what I say!”
	Lewis Caroll, Through the Looking Glass

Others have picked up on “The question is whether you can make words  
mean so many different things.” To me the best part is "They've a  
temper, some of them -- particularly verbs:  they're the proudest —  
adjectives you can do anything with, but verbs — " Any student of  
ancient Greek who has seriously confronted the verbs and sought to  
master them understands very well what is meant by, " ... adjectives  
you can do anything with, but verbs -- "

The reason for this is quite simply that, in the case of verbs far  
more than in the case of other morphological categories, the older  
forms persist alongside of more recently-created or recently-emergent  
forms (e.g. readers of NT Greek are puzzled to find that the same  
author may use EIPA and EIPON as an aorist 1 sg. active of LEGW). At  
ALL eras of ancient Greek that are documented in the literature there  
are concurrent alternative words and forms with overlapping meanings  
and functions. Although there may be some questionable points in  
Chrys Caragounis'  _The Development of Greek and the New Testament_,  
its central thesis is, in my own judgment, valid without a scintilla  
of doubt: there's always been -- at least as early as the later 5th  
century BC -- what he calls "diglossia": a more conservative, even  
archaizing literary language taught in schools and a demotic "vulgar"  
language spoken by merchants and people on the streets. Neologisms  
emerging in the "vulgar" language make their way into the  
sophisticated language taught in the schools and written by civil  
servants, respected authors and scholars.

When I first looked into the sea of confusion prevalent in  
pedagogical textbooks, treatises and reference works with respect to  
ancient Greek voice 10 years ago, my first eye-opener was that HGERQH  
and ANESTH, both 3d sg. aorist indicatives used to refer to the  
resurrection of Jesus, are identical in meaning: both are  
intransitive, both mean "he rose," and HGERQH is not really passive  
at all, although it can be interpreted in a passive sense if an agent  
is indicated.

I went on to learn a lot of other things, such as that EGENETO and  
EGENHQH are traditional and later-emergent forms bearing the same  
function and meaning as 3d sg. aor. indicatives of GINOMAI, or that  
APEKRINAMHN and APEKRIQHN are traditional and later-emergent forms  
bearing the same function and meaning as 1st sg. aor. indicatives of  
APOKRINOMAI. It is commonly said that the middle voice is dying out  
in Hellenistic Koine and the passive voice is supplanting it, but the  
truth is rather that it is only the "middle" morphology that is being  
supplanted by "passive" morphology in the aorist and future tenses;  
the -QH- forms were never uniquely and distinctly Passive in function  
or meaning but rather they always functioned as alternatives to older  
types of aorist and future middle-passives in
-OMHN, -SAMHN and -SOMAI.

Alternative voice forms developed gradually in the course of Greek  
linguistic history. There are relatively few -QH- "passives" in the  
Homeric poems; you'll find aorist 3d sg. forms like (E)BLHTO (for  
"was hit" from BALLW) where EBLHQH is the "standard" later form or  
like HGRETO (for "rose" from EGEIRW/EGEIROMAI) where HGERQH is the  
"standard" later form.

The conjugational patterns that we call "second (x)" are the earlier  
patterns, while what we call "first" emerged later ('secondarily'):  
"first" aorists in -SA and -SAMHN are later than "second" aorists in - 
ON and -OMHN; "first" perfects in -KA (e.g. OLWLEKA, hESTHKA) are  
older than "second" perfects (e.g. OLWLA, hESTAA), and "first"  
passives in -QHN (e.g. EGRAFQH) are later than "second" passives  
(e.g. EGRAFH). In fact, both the "second" and "first" passives are  
really simply intransitive "second aorist" forms (I used to call them  
"third aorists") conjugated with active endings like ESTHN and EBHN.  
Moreover, the perfect middle-passive forms such as GEGENHMAI are  
later developing/emerging forms than the intransitive "second"  
perfects such as GEGONA -- and there's not a scintilla of difference  
in meaning between GEGONA and GEGENHMAI.

Aorist middles in -SAMHN are often (I think, or more often)  
transitive forms indicating self-interest; those in -OMHN are more  
often (I think) intransitive -- and one can usually expect that -QH  
"passive" forms of verbs that have middle aorists in -SAMHN to be  
passive in meaning.

BUT -- you really have to distinguish one verb from another. One of  
the more useful sections of Smyth's _Greek Grammar_ (still far and  
away the most useful of all reference grammars for ancient Greek) is  
the "Appendix: List of Verbs" on pp. 684-722. I have found it easier  
to work with and often more accurate than the entries for particular  
verbs in LSJ -- precisely because it's easier to see in Smyth's  
appendix what are the earlier and later forms of verbs that are at  
all irregular.

The problem -- a major problem -- with the traditional pedaggical  
treatment of verbal voice in the ancient Greek verb is that it  
simultaneously oversimplifies what is really complex and  
overcomplicates what is really simple: that is the "genius" of the  
doctrine of deponency, and that is also the consequence of  
understanding "middle" voice as a halfway house between "active" and  
"passive" voices.

On Mar 21, 2007, at 10:39 PM, Mitch Larramore wrote:

> Dr. Conrad:
>
> I honestly didn't have a particular verse in hand for
> this question. I was trying to isolate Voice and form
> (morphology) to understand what relationship existed
> between these two, if this were doable.
>
> I wondered why the Greeks did not see any reason to
> distinguish Middle from Passive (by way of morphology)
> in the Present, Imperfect, of Perfect tense. And if
> morphology played ANY bearing on how a Greek
> distinguished Middle from Passive, then they must have
> developed two distinct methods, one for the Present,
> Imperfect, and Perfect system, and one for the others.
>
>
> And I thought I was getting somewhere until it was
> pointed out to me that ALL E-SAMHN, SW, SATO... verbs
> are Middle. It didn't make sense to me why the Greeks
> decided that a distinction needed to be made between
> the Middle and Passive IN THE AORIST ONLY. I really
> think that before I look at particular examples, I
> need to see what is going on behind the scenes and
> what is the logic/rationale for there being a need to
> make a special Aorist Middle (which is ONLY Middle),
> and not make this distinction in ALL tenses. What in
> the world does tense have to do with voice????
>
> Mitch Larramore
> Sugar Land, Texas
>
>
>
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Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/




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