Voice Terminology

Barry Hofstetter

Re: Voice Terminology

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

]But voice isn't the actual focus of this thread, is it? I thought we were talking about ἐν+dative.
It would be nice to get back to the original focus, surely.
Barry Hofstetter wrote:I have no idea what this means or how it relates to the discussion at hand. I mean, yeah, I understand the concepts (I think), but it's like saying "First we have to determine water is wet before we wash our hands or sail a boat on it."
I'm trying to figure out how I should react to this...I think I'll go with amused for now. Sometimes we all need a good reminder that water is wet.
It was meant somewhat tongue-in-cheek, to be sure.
Stephen (Hughes) was trying to make a linguistic point on the basis of external world--distinctions between linguistic agency (linguistic world) and personhood (external world). And its a distinction that does not hold because of the lack of direct correspondence between linguistic world (what's in your head) and the external world (what's not in your head). To continue your metaphor, I was quite concerned that Stephen was about to go sailing without a boat and I simply wanted to warn him ahead of time: "Nope, that's not going to work. Water's wet."
Okay. I have to teach this stuff on a daily basis. 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. It also has an ancient pedigree -- it's how the ancients themselves conceptualized their language. When the ancients translate a specific form in Greek with a passive form in Latin, and vice versa, well, that's something we should take seriously. Now, I'm all for theoretical discussion, because it helps keep a small class of scholars fed, but I suppose when it comes to these things I'm more of an engineer than anything else. I'm more concerned with what works.
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Re: Eph 5:18 and Acts 1:5

Post by Stephen Carlson »

Barry Hofstetter wrote:
But voice isn't the actual focus of this thread, is it? I thought we were talking about ἐν+dative.
It would be nice to get back to the original focus, surely.
OK, I split off the posts relating to voice terminology into its own topic under Syntax and Grammar. Since the original topic was more text-oriented about a Construction in Eph 5:18, I also moved that to New Testament. (It shouldn't affect much those who use active topics.) Because I can't split off parts of posts, the resulting division isn't the most perfect but it should do.
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Re: Voice Terminology

Post by cwconrad »

Barry Hofstetter wrote:
Okay. I have to teach this stuff on a daily basis. 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. It also has an ancient pedigree -- it's how the ancients themselves conceptualized their language. When the ancients translate a specific form in Greek with a passive form in Latin, and vice versa, well, that's something we should take seriously. Now, I'm all for theoretical discussion, because it helps keep a small class of scholars fed, but I suppose when it comes to these things I'm more of an engineer than anything else. I'm more concerned with what works.
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. I think that's clearly not the case -- we three "loudmouths" have beat the drums for what might perhaps better be called the Rutger Allan exposition of Middle Voice. It's clear that Stephen Hughes was unfamiliar with this perspective and it's obvious that Barry Hofstetter has never bought into it. That's precisely why I said that Mike's apodictic proposition, "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 -- I repeat, just beginning. Rod Decker in his forthcoming new primer goes very far to presenting the new perspective on Greek voice -- and that's a Koine primer; I think that the revised JACT "Reading Greek" course presents it very nicely for a Classical Attic primer. But the ancient lore, replete with the notion that all the exceptions to its categorizations are to be pigeon-holed into a huge class of "deponent verbs" -- verbs like disobedient children with active meanings that adopt, willy-nilly, middle or passive forms -- comparable to the lists of verbs in French that conjugate with être and with à or de.

Two points in response to Barry's comment above:

(1) It's not at all so clear-cut how "the ancients themselves conceptualized their language." Straton Ladewig's dissertation on deponency is replete with questionable interpretations (and questionable translations) of the ancient grammarians. One common misunderstanding of Dionysius Thrax is the notion that his terms, ἐνέργεια, πάθος, and μεσότης correspond to what traditional Greek pedagogy teaches about "active", "middle", and "passive."

(2) As for the Latin representations of Greek voice-forms, it's true enough that the term "deponent" is apparently derived from Latin grammatical descriptive terminology for verbs with "passive forms and active meanings." But as celebrated a Latin grammarian as Gildersleeve has noted in discussing "deponents' that these are really middle-voice verbs. A. T. Robertson, we may add, spoke contemptuously of the term "deponent" even though he did not undertake to alter the traditional designation. Ladewig's dissertation was intended to demonstrate that the doctrine of "deponency" needs to be retained in pedagogy, but what it reveals in the history of ancient-Greek and Latin pedagogy on verbal voice is that the understanding of Greek and Latin voice morphology and usage has been muddled since antiquity. It's true nonetheless, of course, that Greek and Latin texts have been read and their meanings grasped for centuries despite the flimsy analytical explanations offered for those forms and usage in traditional Greek and Latin pedagogy. Barry says he's more concerned with "what works" in pedagogy. My own conviction is that the traditional account of the ancient Greek voice forms and meaning is inconsistent, terminologically flawed, and that it can be replaced by an account that better explains the linguistic history of voice forms and usage and that far more intelligibly characterizes the kinds of verbs that regularly appear in -μαι/σαι/ται;μην/σο/το forms and in -θη- forms.
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
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Stephen Hughes
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Re: Voice Terminology

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Barry Hofstetter wrote:I have to teach this stuff on a daily basis.
I teach this stuff on an irregular - on request - basis. I read texts containing these forms on an almost daily basis.
cwconrad wrote:It's clear that Stephen Hughes was unfamiliar with this perspective and it's obvious that Barry Hofstetter has never bought into it.
I've been on walkabout for more than 10 years now. I live in a small inland city based on an agricultural economy with almost no manufacturing and with very few English speakers. No international tourists visit here (strictly speaking it is not "no tourists", because in ten years, I've met one; a retired train driver from England) and there are no libraries of note, and even if there were...
Barry Hofstetter 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.
I do not use terminology when I teach. I use a graphical alphabet to represent both the morphology of individual words or word groups and the the syntax of Greek. I do my teaching in (something like) the native language of the people I teach - following from my own experience and the experience of my students, I believe that each new language is is best grasped when elements othere than the language itself are discussed in a languae familiar to and comfortable for the learners, rather than using a language familiar to the teacher - viz yours truly. Using graphical symbols means that students don't have to think of another "word" or series of words when they see a Greek form. Symbolic processing is (or becomes) silent in the mind.
MAubrey wrote:B-Greek regulars
The implied meaning that I am not a regular (a "not we") nor professional poster is not without some merit.

I have only participated in the forum for a short few months, and I have tried to make the best of my time since joining the list. I don't always have access to a computer and when I do, I often have to cut and paste individual letters to compose a post unless I can find things word by word from various websites. Characters with diacritics display as little squares, and I do my best to imagine what they should be according to the words around them, then I can understand what has been posted (and I am able to use them to cut and paste to write my own Greek).

It has been such a long time since I have discussed (Greek) grammar in English that I slipped into saying "passive" without realising the sensitivity the word had with some people on this list. In fact, the symbol that I use for this part of the grammar is an arrow going from NE to SW with a an arrow curving back onto itself. My actual understanding of the form when I read is medio-passive.

Seeing as the language of the people here has a clear way to express all three, active, passive and reflexive "voices", and a more cumbersome way of expressing doing something for ones advantage, even if one were to insist on a certain system of grammar, students will naturally understand the language in terms that they are familiar with.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Barry Hofstetter

Re: Voice Terminology

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

cwconrad wrote:
Barry Hofstetter wrote:
Okay. I have to teach this stuff on a daily basis. 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. It also has an ancient pedigree -- it's how the ancients themselves conceptualized their language. When the ancients translate a specific form in Greek with a passive form in Latin, and vice versa, well, that's something we should take seriously. Now, I'm all for theoretical discussion, because it helps keep a small class of scholars fed, but I suppose when it comes to these things I'm more of an engineer than anything else. I'm more concerned with what works.
(1) It's not at all so clear-cut how "the ancients themselves conceptualized their language." Straton Ladewig's dissertation on deponency is replete with questionable interpretations (and questionable translations) of the ancient grammarians. One common misunderstanding of Dionysius Thrax is the notion that his terms, ἐνέργεια, πάθος, and μεσότης correspond to what traditional Greek pedagogy teaches about "active", "middle", and "passive."
It is not possible to respond to a dissertation that one hasn't read and arguments that haven't been made.
(2) As for the Latin representations of Greek voice-forms, it's true enough that the term "deponent" is apparently derived from Latin grammatical descriptive terminology for verbs with "passive forms and active meanings." But as celebrated a Latin grammarian as Gildersleeve has noted in discussing "deponents' that these are really middle-voice verbs. A. T. Robertson, we may add, spoke contemptuously of the term "deponent" even though he did not undertake to alter the traditional designation. Ladewig's dissertation was intended to demonstrate that the doctrine of "deponency" needs to be retained in pedagogy, but what it reveals in the history of ancient-Greek and Latin pedagogy on verbal voice is that the understanding of Greek and Latin voice morphology and usage has been muddled since antiquity. It's true nonetheless, of course, that Greek and Latin texts have been read and their meanings grasped for centuries despite the flimsy analytical explanations offered for those forms and usage in traditional Greek and Latin pedagogy. Barry says he's more concerned with "what works" in pedagogy. My own conviction is that the traditional account of the ancient Greek voice forms and meaning is inconsistent, terminologically flawed, and that it can be replaced by an account that better explains the linguistic history of voice forms and usage and that far more intelligibly characterizes the kinds of verbs that regularly appear in -μαι/σαι/ται;μην/σο/το forms and in -θη- forms.
I'm not sure how this turned into a discussion on deponents. My concern is to explain to the student the difference between τύπτει τὸν στρατιώτην and τύπτεται ὐπὸ τοῦ στρατιώτου. If I'm not allowed to call them active and passive, how can I describe them? And what about τύπτεται τὸν στρατιώτην? What am I allowed to call that?
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Re: Voice Terminology

Post by cwconrad »

Barry Hofstetter wrote:I'm not sure how this turned into a discussion on deponents. My concern is to explain to the student the difference between τύπτει τὸν στρατιώτην and τύπτεται ὐπὸ τοῦ στρατιώτου. If I'm not allowed to call them active and passive, how can I describe them? And what about τύπτεται τὸν στρατιώτην? What am I allowed to call that?
Barry, nobody is holding a gun to your head and telling you that you must teach your classes a new account of the ancient Greek voice system. You are in an overwhelming majority of those who continue to teach the traditional account. I taught the traditional account myself when I taught first-year Greek before I retired twelve years ago -- but I would not teach it now. I might add that, although I used to compare Greek constructions with Latin constructions back when I began teaching in the 1960's, I don't think that the languages are as analogous as I once thought.

The specific points I was attempting to make with my comments on Stratton Ladewig's dissertation and Dionysius Thrax and on Latin deponents as middle-voice forms were intended as responses to your claim that the ancients understood Greek voice exactly as traditional pedagogy teaches it and that Latin translators understood Greek voice-usage in the same terms as traditional pedagogy teaches it. I can see that what I wrote was not clear and probably eve misleading: I wasn't intending to discuss deponency as such, but rather to suggest that the great number of so-called "deponent" verbs in Latin is beter understood -- as Basil Gildersleeve understood -- in terms of middle-voice morphology.

With regard to your pattern sentences, you are "allowed" to say whatever you prefer to your classes. For my part, I would say:

(1) τύπτει τὸν στρατιώτην has a verb in what is traditionally called "active" morphology, that the verb is transitive, active in meaning and takes στρατιώτην as its direct object or objective complement;

(2) τύπτεται ὐπὸ τοῦ στρατιώτου has a verb in what is traditionally called "middle-passive" morphology, that the verb is transitive,passive in meaning, and that ὐπὸ τοῦ στρατιώτου is formulated in the standard construction for indicating the agent responsible for an event;

(3) τύπτεται τὸν στρατιώτην has a verb in what is traditionally called "middle-passive" morphology. As τύπτειν is a transitive verb, one might expect to understand τὸν στρατιώτην as a direct object of τύπτεται -- but the construction seems rather anomalous, as the subject is not indicated other than through the 3rd-person termination. It looks like a middle meaning is intended, but the phrasing seems somewhat elliptical; if we had something like ὁ στρατηγὸς τύπτεται τὸν στρατιώτην, then the sense might be "The commander strikes his own soldier,." That's somewhat odd, however. It needs a context, like discipline meted out by a sergeant to a buck private who has deliberately disobeyed an order. That is to say, the usage of τύπτεται should be understood as reflexive, and in this snippet of a phrase, it doesn't seem very clear.

I believe that students can learn to read and understand Greek texts with the various voice usages without analyzing the constructions. Perhaps it doesn't matter that much what we call the forms in terms of morphological terminology; I do think that inconsistencies arise when we assume and teach that μαι/σαι/ται;μην/σο/το forms are fundamentally passive or that θη forms are fundamentally passive. What i think needs to be brought into grammatical explanation of voice usage is that the ancient-Greek voice system is built upon a polarity of "standard" (traditionally "active") voice forms and "reflexive" (traditionally "middle-passive" voice forms -- RATHER THAN on a polarity of "active" and "passive" with a "middle" usage of which students never quite understand what's "middle" about it.
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
Stephen Hughes
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Re: Voice Terminology

Post by Stephen Hughes »

cwconrad wrote:I taught the traditional account myself when I taught first-year Greek before I retired twelve years ago -- but I would not teach it now.
cwconrad wrote:I believe that students can learn to read and understand Greek texts with the various voice usages without analyzing the constructions. Perhaps it doesn't matter that much what we call the forms in terms of morphological terminology; I do think that inconsistencies arise when we assume and teach that μαι/σαι/ται;μην/σο/το forms are fundamentally passive or that θη forms are fundamentally passive.
Okay for the negatives
cwconrad wrote:What i think needs to be brought into grammatical explanation of voice usage is that the ancient-Greek voice system is built upon a polarity of "standard" (traditionally "active") voice forms and "reflexive" (traditionally "middle-passive" voice forms -- RATHER THAN on a polarity of "active" and "passive" with a "middle" usage of which students never quite understand what's "middle" about it.
Here is your suggestion.

Do you have any ideas about how to bring that out practically in teaching?
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Eeli Kaikkonen
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Re: Voice Terminology

Post by Eeli Kaikkonen »

Barry Hofstetter wrote: I'm not sure how this turned into a discussion on deponents. My concern is to explain to the student the difference between τύπτει τὸν στρατιώτην and τύπτεται ὐπὸ τοῦ στρατιώτου. If I'm not allowed to call them active and passive, how can I describe them? And what about τύπτεται τὸν στρατιώτην? What am I allowed to call that?
How about this:

τύπτει τὸν στρατιώτην: Quite clear. Active in form, active (transitive) in meaning.

τύπτεται ὐπὸ τοῦ στρατιώτου: The form is mediopassive. It tells us that the grammatical subject is affected by the event described by the verb. What makes it passive in meaning is the context: the word itself and in this case the ὐπὸ+gen. agent.

τύπτεται τὸν στρατιώτην: The form is mediopassive. It tells us that the grammatical subject (seen only in -εται, not as a separate word) is affected by the event described by the verb. What makes it middle in meaning is the context: the word itself (because τύπτω is transitive) and the direct object in accusative. The interpretation is something like Carl said, I guess.

There are two things to remember. First, form and meaning are two different things. I repeat your question: "My concern is to explain to the student the difference between τύπτει τὸν στρατιώτην and τύπτεται ὐπὸ τοῦ στρατιώτου. If I'm not allowed to call them active and passive, how can I describe them?" What exactly are you explaining - the two forms or the meanings of the two phrases? I think that any mediopassive form coupled with ὐπὸ+gen. agent must necessarily be "passive" in meaning, i.e. there are semantic agent and patient and they are two different entities. Not so with mediopassive forms which are "middle" in meaning where the agent or experiencer or whatever is more or less directly affected and is the grammatical subject. The form gives only the basic meaning "subject-affectedness" whereas the context tells what kind of affectedness it is.

Second, if you teach the old way you have to tell that the student must always check the lexicon. Only in BDAG, LSJ etc. you can see what the different forms of a word mean. This is the obstacle I had when I first learned about "passive" and "middle". It's quite strange to first say that there is passive, then middle, and then say that there are so many unexplained exceptions ("deponents", middle forms with passive meaning or vice versa) that you have to check out the lexicon anyways, for every word. After reading what Carl has written about the Greek mediopassive I understood what was wrong with the textbooks I have read.
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Re: Voice Terminology

Post by MAubrey »

I can't say that there's really anything I can add here.

I don't teach Greek and, well, to be honest, don't want to teach Greek. Maybe that will change in the future, I don't know. But even if it does currently my sense is that I don't have a sure enough grasp of Greek as Greek to do a sufficient job (...and that's probably true for most people who currently teach Greek). I'm working on that in the meantime. But that also means that pedagogical questions are beyond my interests, knowledge, and ability. The question of how to teach this approach to voice would be better answered by those who have. Stephen Carlson is one. Others I know (who don't participate here, unfortunately) are: Jonathan Pennington, Mark Dubis, and Nick Ellis. I'm sure I could think of more if I took the time...
Mike Aubrey, Linguist
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RandallButh
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Re: Voice Terminology

Post by RandallButh »

Do you have any ideas about how to bring that out practically in teaching?
It always helps to ask how a child will use and grow into the use of the form. When the little kid first walks down the dusty alley she may be saying πορεύομαι. When jumping up and down in some game ἄλλομαι. thus, she frames her reality.

For the theoretician, this is where cognitive linguistics and chaos theory intersect with language pedagogy. You gotta love this, because we are this.



PS: But would she say *τύπτομαι στρατιώτην. I think not.
(I think I saw "τύπτομαι στρατιώτην" offered somewhere above.)
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