From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Mon Dec 21 1998 - 10:11:04 EST
At 9:23 AM -0500 12/21/98, Jonathan Robie wrote:
>Gramcord flags all future forms of EIMI in the GNT as middle. Why is this?
Because it's true! It is true not only in the GNT, but without exception
that I'm aware of, at all periods of ancient Greek (Homeric ESSOMAI KTL.).
Moreover, although the present tense forms are active in the indicative,
subjunctive, optative, and imperative in the Homeric and Classical Attic
and dialectal forms generally, the imperfect forms are already shifting
into the middle voice in dialectal forms earlier and that is evident in the
GNT 1 sg. HMHN. In Modern Greek the entire conjugation of the verb is
middle: EIMAI, KTL.
This accords well with the argument I've propounded here previously that
the Middle voice in itself has nothing to do with transitivity, that there
are numerous "intransitive" verbs, particularly verbs of motion, that have
middle-voice forms, and that the fundamental notion involved in
middle-voice forms is the involvement of the verb's subject in the verbal
expression.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cconrad@yancey.main.nc.us
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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