From: Jim Beale (beale@uconect.net)
Date: Mon Jun 02 1997 - 19:18:04 EDT
At 7:41 AM -0400 6/2/97, Carl W. Conrad wrote:
>At 6:57 AM -0400 6/2/97, Jonathan Robie wrote:
>
>>P.S. In church yesterday, I finally figured out how to understand the
>>phrase, "please be seated". Ever since I was a child, this phrase has
>>puzzled me (who was going to seat me, and if someone else was going to do
>>it, why phrase it as a request?). Is this an example of a real middle in
>>English?
>
>O BENE DICTUM, Jonathan! While I would NOT call this "an example of a real
>middle in English," I would argue that the only proper form for this in
>classical or KoinŽ Greek would in fact be a middle imperative, something
>like KAQISASQE. This is comparable to my observation that Spanish "Aqui se
>habla espa–ol" is the equivalent of the English passive, "Spanish is spoken
>here."
I just checked and I can't find any instances of KAQHMAI which are
other than middle voice. Is that unusual? Are there any other verbs
which only show up in the middle voice?
I never noticed that "Please be seated" was an implicit middle voice
(if it makes sense to say that!) before. What an interesting thought.
Thanks Jonathan!
In Christ,
Jim Beale
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:38:18 EDT