Barry Hofstetter [url=http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1977&p=11340&hilit=daily#p11321]Re: Voice Terminology[/url] wrote:Pedagogically, the distinction between active, passive and middle explains a lot of what's going on with the verbs -- here is this form, and here is what it means.
cwconrad [url=http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1977&p=11340&hilit=daily#p11324]Re: Voice Terminology[/url] wrote:Someone said (Mike Aubrey, probably?) he thought that B-Greekers had pretty well accepted the sort of perspective on ancient Greek voice that he and Stephen Carlson and I have set forth. ... "There is no passive voice in Greek", was not very helpful when Greek pedagogy continues to set forth the ancient traditional lore of active, middle-passive and passive morphology and distinct active, middle, and passive meanings. The fact is that the pedagogy is just beginning to shift
cwconrad [url=http://ibiblio.org/bgreek/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1986#p11370]Teaching the New Perspective on Greek Voice[/url] wrote:The fact is that ancient Greek voice morphology and usage are quite complex, partly because of the gradual shift from the older μαι/σαι/ται;μην/σο/το middle-passive forms to the newer θη forms that came gradually into standard usage over several centuries, and partly becaue of the survival in everyday usage of older forms long superseded in less-frequently used verbs.
There is a point in all this taken together that if there is no "passive" voice, then there is a need to learn opposites along with verbs. There is a natural inquisitiveness in students to be able to find the opposite of the active (the reverse way of expressing what is happening in a situation) and that needs to be catered for. Also an explanation of the development of the medio-passive voice needs to explain the relationship between both between the verb's own forms and its (situational) opposites.mwpalmer [url=http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=2174&start=10#p12861]Re: Linguists: What have you done for me lately?[/url] wrote:a new reference grammar would need to be developed along side a new lexicon, both informed by recent work in syntax and semantics.
To give some examples... ἀκολουθεῖν>>ἡγεῖσθαι||, βαλεῖν/θεῖναι>>κεῖσθαι||, καταστῆσαι>>διακονεῖν||
That is to say that the passive of "to follow" is "to lead", the passive of "to place" or "to put" is "to be resting on", the passive of "appoint" is "to serve".
This won't be true of all verbs, but will be for ones where there are two (or more) definte viewpoints on an action.