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Re: Observations on Ancient Greek Voice (LONG!)



FILOI,

My thanks also to Carl for his lucid and persuasive post on voice. I'm with 
Randy on the terminological/pedagogical dimension of the issue; I teach my 
students that the middle voice is different from active or passive, and that 
it may best be glossed (and understood) in ways that vary depending on the 
verb involved.

I resist the "reflexive" character of the middle voice as a pedagogical 
problem (certainly not as a dimension of diachronic grammatical analysis!), 
based on repeated frustrating experiences. In the weeks after I introduced 
the middle voice, students would spot every form that might morphologically 
be middle or passive, and ask, "Well, is it okay to translate that as 'I 
raise myself' " (or whatever, depending on the verb). I was then obliged to 
talk about the way that some verbs appear in the middle but not the passive, 
some in the passive but not the middle, some in both, and to urge students 
not to twist their minds into knots trying to come up with "to myself" 
translations whenever they see a m/p form without an explicit agent. 

Now I just teach students that middle forms should be checked against the 
textbook or a lexicon or grammar, and omit the (often misleading) "for 
myself" explanation.

Awaiting correction--

A K M Adam
f49adam@ptsmail.ptsem.edu
Princeton Theological Seminary

"To translate is human; to parse, divine"