Re: Future "deponents"

From: Randy LEEDY (Rleedy@bju.edu)
Date: Thu Oct 08 1998 - 12:13:50 EDT

Thanks for the post, Carl, and thanks for mailing me a copy, since I
get only the digests. You wrote:
>>>
... Of course, it is certainly true also that there are intransitive
verbs with active forms, and in fact, HLQON functions as the ACTIVE
aorist of ERCOMAI and BAINW or PROBAINW may be used to mean much the
same thing as POREUOMAI (at least when one is traveling on foot!). I
think the same psychology is at work in the fact that so many Greek
verbs that are active in the present tense go into the
middle/reflexive in the future--they apparently involve a notion of
self-projection or self-propulsion in the thought of the agent
<<<

You're going to have to help me if you want me to see the force of
your argumentation. Wouldn't this "notion of self-projection" be
something inherent in the nature of the action itself, regardless of
tense? What is there about putting the word "go" (BAINW) into the
future that would somehow enhance this notion of self-projection to a
point that justifies the use of the middle voice in that tense only?
If there is something inherently "self-projecting" in the nature of
futurity itself (I rather doubt this idea, but I'm floating it as a
possibility), then why wouldn't all or at least a majority of verbs
shift to the middle voice in the future?

I do recall, now, this section in your thesis, and what I now remember
more specifically about it is that it left me unconvinced. Perhaps
this is so because I am too dense to pick up the force of some factor
that is more obvious to you than to me. Do my objections indicate to
you what I'm missing that you're seeing?

****************************
In love to God and neighbor,
Randy Leedy
Bob Jones University
Greenville, SC
RLeedy@bju.edu
**************************** 

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