I'm beginning to think that a case can be made for the logic of the linkage of ἔρχεσθαι and ἐλθεῖν -- that the second-aorist ἐλθεῖν may indeed bear middle-marking of a sort not unrelated to a future-tense ἐλεύσομαι and a second-perfect ἐλήλουθα (that's the older form of ἐλήλυθα).Stephen Carlson elsewhere in this forum wrote:What confuses people (at least in the SBL session) was the alternation between ἔρχεσθαι and έλθεῖν. After Rutger explained how the subject is affected in ἔρχεσθαι, there was an expectation in the audience that ἐλθεῖν should likewise be middle even though it is active. Similarly with so-called "future deponents." This inconsistency bothered people, so the active member of these pairs must be explicitly explained as being unmarked for subject-affectedness instead of marking non-affectedness or activity. Diachronically, the reason may be that the middle forms are more recent, when the voice system was more established in Greek, but synchronically the reason has to be that only the middle forms are marked for subject-affectedness while the active ones are not so marked.
For two years now I have been mulling over a discussion focusing on this very problem. It’s in a volume published in 1969 titled, “Oppositions of voice in Greek, Slavic and Baltic” by a Danish linguist, Herman Kølln. It was called to my attention by Peter Gentry of SBTL in Louisville, KY. The volume is not readily accessible, but Peter sent me a PDF of the relevant portion ; it’s a large 4.2MB file, which I’ve posted on my web-site at http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/docs/HK-Voice.pdf
Here are the questions I’ve been pondering and my thinking about likely answers:
I read DT as meaning that there are two fundamental “dispositions” of the Greek verb, that by ἐνέργεια he means the active set of inflections, by πάθος he means the middle-passive set of inflections, and by μεσότης he is referring to verbs that display (παρίστᾶσιν) an active form in one or more tense, and a middle-passive form in one or more other tenses. I know that this has been interpreted to mean that DT is espousing a doctrine of “deponency”, but that assumes that πάθος refers to passive voice. I note that DT’s illustrative forms do not involve θη forms at all — and I have a bit of a suspicion that he just may consider the θη forms as a variety of active aorists — i.e. I suspect that he may lump together all of the aorist forms conjugated with ην/ης/η κτλ. (athematic second aorist active, first passives in -θην and second passives in -ην) as active forms.Dionysius Thrax wrote:διαθέσεις εἰσὶ τρεῖς, ἐνέργεια, πάθος, μεσότης· ἐνέργεια μὲν οἷον τύπτω, πάθος δὲ οἷον τύπτομαι, μεσότης δὲ ἡ ποτὲ μὲν ἐνέργειαν ποτὲ δὲ πάθος παριστᾶσα, οἷον πέπηγα διέφθορα ἐποιησάμην ἐγραψάμην.
If that’s right, let’s note that πέπηγα and διέφθορα are second perfect forms meaning “I’m stuck fast” and “I’m ruined” — they bear middle-passive meanings and their proper present-tense forms should be πήγνυμαι and διαφθείρομαι. Of course these verbs have active forms (πήγνυμι “fasten” and διαφθείρω “render useless”), but the thing to note is that the active form in the perfect tense carries a middle-passive meaning. And that’s true of other second perfect verbs, eg. γέγονα from γίνομαι and πέποιθα from πείθομαι. And there are others. My guess is that the “second perfect” forms antedate the emergence of the later regular perfect tenses conjugated with κα/κας/κε endings. Perhaps they are remnants of an era when a full set of perfect middle-passive endings in μαι/σαι/ται had not yet become standard.
And if that guess is right, then might the same hold true for the athematic second aorists in ην/ης/η? Those verbs are, I think, intransitive generally and also, I think, they carry middle-passive meaning. The θην/θης/θη inflection seems to have emerged as a standard pattern for these verbs with middle-passive meaning. Moreover, the ην/ης/η and θην/θης/θη middle-passive aorist forms contrast nicely with the first aorist forms in σα/σας/σε which are, by and large, semantically active: Consider the pair ἔβη “he strode” and ἔβησε “he made to walk” or the pair ἔστη “he stood/stood still” and ἔστησε “he established, made to stand.”
These thoughts have finally brought into focus for me the arguments set forth by Herman Kølln in the monograph cited above What Kølln argues is that all second aorist verbs bearing active endings are marked for subject-affectedness. All second-aorist verbs — both the thematic verbs of the type εἶδον and εἶπον and ἦλθον and the athematic verbs of the type ἐπάγην (from πήγνυμαι) and ἐφθάρην (from φθείρομαι) and ἐφάνην (from φαίνομαι).
It would appear that active aorists in σα/σας/σε with transitive active semantic force may have formed a very useful polarity with intransitive middle-passive aorists with passive semantic force. Cf. Egbert Bakker, “Voice, Aspect and Aktionsart: Middle and Passive in Ancient Greek” in Barbara A. Fox, Paul J. Hopper, edd., Voice: Form and function (Typological Studies in Language 27) (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1994), pp. 23-47.
More “what if …?” questions come to a mind that’s always enjoyed poking around in the archaeology of the Greek verb without having any adequate training for the task:
1. Might there have been a time when middle-passive endings had not yet developed, when aorist forms with “active” endings in σα/σας/σε marked verbs with active causative meaning, while aorist forms with “active” endings in ον/ες/ε or ην/ης/η marked verbs with middle or passive meaning?
and
2. Might the emergence/invention of middle-passive inflection have begun with the addition of -αι to the basic personal endings of the Greek verb, namely μ/σ/(τ)? Or perhaps that began with the emergence/invention of middle-passive endings in the aorist with the addition of -ην to the first-person μ and o to the second- and third-person endings ς and τ, yielding the sequence μην, σο, το, κτλ. and afterwards the perhaps the primary middle-passive forms emerged or were invented by inserting an α between μ and ι in μι/σι/τι … ντι?
3. Another of the “mysteries” of mismatched voice-forms is that of present-tense “active” verbs with future-tense “middle” forms. There aren’t many of these, but unless I’m mistaken (always a strong possibility), they fall into a pattern of this sort: even if their present-tense form is active, they are verbs that do seem to bear subject-affected meaning, they have middle future-tense forms and second-aorist active forms (e.g. λαμβάνω, λήψομαι, ἔλαβον; μανθάνω, μαθήσομαι, ἔμαθον; βαίνω, βήσομαι, ἔβην; γινώσκω, γνώσομαι, ἔγνων).
And that’s my can of worms. The big question: is the difference between the sigmatic aorist on the one hand and the thematic and athematic aorists on the other a difference somehow linked to the distinction between transitive active verbs and intransitive verbs that are marked for subject-affectedness? Closely related to that question is whether first-perfect and second-perfect tenses differ in the same manner — second-perfect forms are intransitive and marked for subject-affectedness? And lastly, are those verbs with future-tense middle forms linked to present-tense active forms basically subject-affected verbs?
Anyone want to play in my sandbox?