Re: What is the opposite of a deponent?

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Mon Dec 06 1999 - 06:43:04 EST

I note to my chagrin that I left out an item that was essential to one
point I was making in my brief response last night:

At 8:13 PM -0600 12/5/99, Carl W. Conrad wrote:
>I can't speak with any assurance about NT Greek verbs in general; I do know
>that at least one other verb, EUAGGELIZOMAI is generally middle taking an
>object in the NT but is used in a passive sense in Mt and Lk in the
>response of Jesus to the disciples of John the Baptist, "PTWCOI
>EUAGGELIZONTAI." I think that there are other verbs too. I know that PAUW
>in Attic Greek generally means to make someone else stop doing something
>but is normally middle with a participle to express the notion of "desist
>from doing" (EPAUSAMHN TAUTA PRATTWN).

I had intended to note that the "active" form PAUW appears to be used,
although less frequently, in exactly the same way, so that I might have
written EPAUSA TAUTA PRATTWN and meant the same thing as EPAUSAMHN TAUTA
PRATTWN, namely "I've stopped doing that." I rather suspect that there are
several other verbs where the middle voice is far more common for an
emphatic assertion of personal behavior but the active voice is
occasionally used without any readily discernible difference of meaning.
I've never been fully clear in my own understanding of the difference
between the two aorist imperatives IDOU and IDE, so far as actual
understood meaning is concerned: both seem to mean "take note!" But of
course there's a difference of usage in that IDOU seems used less
specifically as an imperative and more as an interjection that has lost
much of the verbal force, much as have French "voici" and "voilˆ" wherein
the verbal force of the imperative of voir seems muted; but IDE and the
less common IDETE do appear to have much stronger imperative force. In
fact, that IDOU should be middle is an interesting fact in itself, and one
asks (at least I ask) why? Is it something like a German "Schau mal Du!" or
a sort of colloquial English "Have you a look-see"?

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
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/ 

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