From: Bryant J. Williams III (bjwvmw@com-pair.net)
Date: Fri Nov 02 2001 - 11:54:26 EST
Dear Iver:
I like the idea of maintaining the same divisions of Active, Middle, and
Passive. All that is being done is to indicate that a particular word is A,
M, or P in form. We must NOT confuse "form" with "meaning" or "use." The
same holds true in hermeneutics where too many people confuse application
with interpretation. This must not be done when discussing the Voice, etc.
En Xpistw,
Rev. Bryant J. Williams III
----- Original Message -----
From: Iver Larsen <iver_larsen@sil.org>
To: Biblical Greek <b-greek@franklin.oit.unc.edu>
Sent: Friday, November 02, 2001 2:28 AM
Subject: [b-greek] Re: The interaction of Greek voice with other parts ofthe
language
> Carl said:
> > This is something that I, at least, have been talking about ad nauseam
in
> > the course of these threads; my position is that we don't really
> > have three voice forms so much as we have two forms of the
middle-passive,
> > the earlier MAI/SAI/TAI,MHN/SO/TO forms that appear in most tenses and
the
> later -QH-
> > forms that became more regular in the aorist and future--although we've
> > been talking about some verbs that retained MHN/SO/TO forms in the
aorist
> > that are pretty clearly passive in meaning even there.
>
> It may be the case that we only have two voice FORMS, but I think we
should
> maintain the underlying 3-way distinction between active, middle and
> passive. As long as grammatical tagging is not only morphological, but
takes
> into consideration the syntax and semantics, then I believe we need to
keep
> those three tags: A, M and P. It might be useful to add a tag for
> transitivity, since an A form of a verb may be intransitive, transitive or
> ditransitive. This would help to separate voice from transitivity.
>
> Thanks to Kimmo Huovila I have realized that Danish has a common verb form
> characterized by a final -s attached to the verb. It is related to
passive,
> but still different. My wife tells me that this has in traditional Danish
> grammar been called a passive, but the only way I can sensibly describe it
> is to call it a middle, because it is in the middle between active and
> passive. Sometimes it is reflexive in meaning, the agents act upon
> themselves. One of the differences to passive is that we can easily add
> the -s to intransitive verbs whereas the normal passive transformation
> cannot be applied to an intransitive verb.
> I won't give many examples since most people on the list do not understand
> Danish, and this is not a list on general linguistics. I have been using
> this 3-way distinction as a native speaker, but I have never before tried
to
> make a linguistic analysis of it.
>
> To maybe give you a little glimpse of what I am talking about, let me take
> just one verb at random, the verb "se" which means "see":
>
> Han se-r det - He sees it common active
> Det blev se-t - It was seen common passive
> Det se-s klart - It is clearly seen, it is obvious - Middle form
>
> The common active normally has the full case frame which puts somewhat
equal
> weight on the agent, the activity and the patient.
> The common passive suppresses the agent, and thereby indirectly puts more
> focus on the patient which is the former object, now the subject.
> The middle here focuses on perception, that the people concerned actually
> see and understand what has been explained. That they take it in, so to
> speak.
> For other verbs, the exact meaning of the middle form which is marked by
the
> final -s suffix, may be similar or different. This makes it hard to
pinpoint
> the meaning of the middle, because the meaning depends so much on the
actual
> verb being used.
> I think the general idea is that the middle involves the participants
deeply
> in the action. This can be illustrated by the verb for "hit" in Danish
which
> is "slaa":
>
> De slaa-r ham - they hit him
> De slaa-s - they are fighting (hitting one another continually)
>
> The reason I raise the point is that my hypothesis is that the 3-way
> distinction between active, middle and passive may well be a very basic
> feature of IE languages when it is still current in Danish and has
vestiges
> in English. (Unfortunately, almost everything is lost in English, probably
> the grammatically most degenerated and simplified language of all IE
ones).
> The 3-way distinction may never have been full-fledged over all verbs. In
> fact, due to the nature of the distinction, it only would apply to certain
> verbs. The fact that middle and passive have not always been distinguished
> in the morphology does not mean that they are semantically and
underlyingly
> the same concepts.
>
> This is why I would suggest we keep the underlying 3-way distinction as a
> basic part of how the Greek person was thinking. Then we will have to sort
> out the morphology as a separate issue.
>
> Iver Larsen
>
>
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