Mathewson and Porter - Voice and Mood: A Linguistic Approach

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Matthew Longhorn
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Mathewson and Porter - Voice and Mood: A Linguistic Approach

Post by Matthew Longhorn »

In the time BGreek has been down there have been a few books that came onto my radar. I posted to NLM on facebook, but as with one of my other posts, reposting here in case people aren’t part of that group. This one is scheduled for Dec 2021 release

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Voice-Mood-Li ... oks&sr=1-3
A recognized expert in Greek grammar examines two features of the Greek verb: voice and mood. Drawing on his years of teaching experience at a leading seminary, David Mathewson examines these two important topics in Greek grammar in light of modern linguistics and offers fresh insights. The book is illustrated with examples from the Greek New Testament, making it an ideal textbook for the intermediate Greek classroom. This is the first volume in a new series on Greek grammar edited by Stanley E. Porter.
And in the meantime, The Perfect Storm has finally been released, although possibly dated by now given the date of the conference
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Perfect-Storm ... oks&sr=1-1
Nowhere are the chaotic debates surrounding contemporary aspect theory more heated than in discussions of the theory’s application to Hellenistic Greek, and especially its understanding of the semantics of the Greek perfect tense. This book is a distilled academic debate among three of the best-known scholars on the subject, each defending his own unique interpretation while engaging the other two. The Perfect Storm will prove an indispensable resource for any scholar seeking to write convincingly on the Greek perfect in the future.
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Re: Mathewson and Porter - Voice and Mood: A Linguistic Approach

Post by Matthew Longhorn »

This has just come out on Logos and print editions
https://www.logos.com/product/206530/vo ... c-approach

Public service announcement finished
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Re: Mathewson and Porter - Voice and Mood: A Linguistic Approach

Post by Matthew Longhorn »

As part of his discussion of the work done on the Greek voice system, Mathewson discusses a phd thesis done by Bryan Fletcher titled “Voice in the Greek of the New Testament”. I am not going to go into all of the details but Fletcher basically seems to be looking at voice in NT Greek in terms of ergativity. Not wanting to basically copy and paste the lot of it here is a key quote “For Fletcher’s model, the primary defining feature of voice is the role of the grammatical subject, whether it functions as the agent (active) or medium (middle, passive) of the verbal process.” Here we have just a two voice system.
He also notes that “Fletcher, unlike Allan and Aubrey, interprets the -(θ)η- ending as primarily marking passivity in the aorist and future tense forms.”

So, I wanted to find Fletcher’s thesis to give it a read at some point in the future, but in doing so came across a fairly critical comment by James Voelz pertaining to an SBL presentation Fletcher gave on this. Voelz asserts that Fletcher “explored the Greek verb with, let us say, not entirely satisfactory results (you cannot just cherry-pick your evidence!).”
https://concordiatheology.org/2018/12/r ... -sbl-2018/

I was wondering if anyone has more info on the context of that statement by Voelz, and whether it impacts only his SBL presentation or by extension the thesis as a whole? It would be useful to understand the possible issues as ergativity comes up a lot in further chapters of this book.
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Re: Mathewson and Porter - Voice and Mood: A Linguistic Approach

Post by Matthew Longhorn »

Trying to get my head around the concept of ergativity that Mathewson sees as key in the analysis of voice and getting confused.
On page 30 he writes
More concisely, “Is the process brought about from within, or from outside?” That is, in an ergativity-based interpretation of a clause, the notions of causality and agency play focal roles. According to Halliday, if the action is self-engendered, with no reference to an outside cause, the clause is nonergative. If the process has an external cause in its clause, and it is brought about by an agent, then the clause is ergative.
And then on page 31 referring to the sentence “the boat sailed” he writes
In this second sentence there is no specific reference to an agent. The action, then, is seen as self-engendering, occurring from within, with no reference to an external cause. Hence it is ergative.
Having a seriously dumb moment, but is he contradicting himself?
I read Halliday and Matthiessen’s chapter on this in Hallidays Introduction to Functional Grammar and came away with the understanding that an ergative representation of a subject is one without an external cause. So in his example “the lion chased the tourist” he sees this as an ergative/non-ergative contrast. According to this reading Mathewson’s second quote is correct (assuming he contradicting himself, which I allow is more likely to be my misunderstanding of him)

This question is not specifically related to Greek, but more to the analysis of Mathewson that will be applied to Greek later, so I will eventually bring in Greek off the back of this question. Moderators - feel free to delete if not appropriate
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Re: Mathewson and Porter - Voice and Mood: A Linguistic Approach

Post by Matthew Longhorn »

I would be interested to hear what our middle voice interested folk make of this quote from page 48 (yes, I am going slowly - linguistics tutor, German tutor also and Classical Greek tutor once a week as well as tutoring twice a week leaves less time than I wish I had outside of work. I need to get more disciplined with a timetable!). My Classical Greek tutor is definitely not sold on the Aubrey and Allan view which has provoked interesting back and forth. Mathewson here sides more with him while I am not persuaded so far

Because, for economic reasons, formal redundancy usually does not persist in Greek, the separate middle and passive endings in the aorist and future should be differentiated semantically. The -(θ)η- ending, then, signals that the subject is the medium (i.e., the affected participant); however, in addition to subject-affectedness it now also indicates external agency, whether specified or unspecified. Some of the issue is caused by awkward English translations, such as “he was answered” for ἀπεκρίθη, or “he was come” for ἐπορεύθη. However, these can still be seen as true passives, with a translation along the lines of “was caused to …” or “was being moved to …” In such instances, the external cause of the action can usually be found in the wider literary or even cultural context. For example, in Matthew 1:20 Joseph is commanded by the angel, μὴ φοβηθῇς (do not be afraid) to take Mary as his wife. The -θῇς ending indicates passivity, with the external agency found in the broader context: his discovery that Mary was pregnant and his not wanting to marry her. The translation “do not be moved to fear” could bring out the passive notion here.
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Re: Mathewson and Porter - Voice and Mood: A Linguistic Approach

Post by Stephen Carlson »

The θη form is in a process of expansion during the Koine period. I can see why a classicist would want to hang on its classical value, but it eventually takes over the aorist middle forms as in the modern language. It is really hard to capture this in-progress change in our texts. Perhaps the best way is Allan’s, who categorizes the middles and notes where the θη form has taken over. There also seem to be phonological patterns as well. In any case, there is a lot of memorization.
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Re: Mathewson and Porter - Voice and Mood: A Linguistic Approach

Post by Matthew Longhorn »

Stephen Carlson wrote: November 24th, 2021, 2:35 pm The θη form is in a process of expansion during the Koine period
That is why i am doubting it at the moment as well - Allan and Rachel Aubrey’s analysis. I did write in this comment a moment ago that “I am not convinced that Mathewson accounts here for spontaneous action and body motion for example. Still slowly slogging through”
Then came across this by Mathewson and still had time to edit
As already seen above, Aubrey has argued that -(θ)η- originated as a middle marker of spontaneous event types and later expanded to include more patient-like events. Hence, verbs such as this are middles. It may be the case that the passive voice, indicated by the -(θ)η- endings, was taking over the middle usages. While Aubrey’s view could be true of some verbs, if -(θ)η- endings mark passive voice, as argued above, then intransitive verbs such as ἀπεκρίθην, ὤφθην, ἠγέρθην, and ἐφοβήθην should be placed in this category (see above). This is especially the case with verbs that have separate aorist middle endings in addition to -(θ)η- endings. For example,
ἀποκρίνομαι
ἀπεκρινάμην (middle)
ἀπεκρίθην (passive)
γίνομαι
ἐγένομην (middle)
ἐγενήθην (passive)
That is, with these -(θ)η- verbs the subject is involved in the action in some way, but there is an external cause, though unstated. External cause and agency can usually be found in the broader literary and even cultural context. Possible translations for these instances are “being moved to” or “being made to.”
I also appreciate Mathewson arguing against the category of “divine passive” as a grammatical category
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Re: Mathewson and Porter - Voice and Mood: A Linguistic Approach

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I popped over here to share that Rachel's review of Mathewson in JETS has been published. JETS reached out and asked Rachel to review Mathewson. It wasn't a fun review for her to write. It's published in JETS 65:3 (2022).
Stephen Carlson wrote: November 24th, 2021, 2:35 pm The θη form is in a process of expansion during the Koine period. I can see why a classicist would want to hang on its classical value, but it eventually takes over the aorist middle forms as in the modern language. It is really hard to capture this in-progress change in our texts. Perhaps the best way is Allan’s, who categorizes the middles and notes where the θη form has taken over. There also seem to be phonological patterns as well. In any case, there is a lot of memorization.
Rachel's GVR chapters documents changes into the post-classical period in her figures.

Image
Adapted from Allan (2003, 156). See also the semantic map for the distribution of sigmatic mid. aor. and (θ)η aor. in Homer (147) compared to the map of their distribution in Classical (156) We see (θ)η extending its roots from Homer through Classical to Hellenistic as it includes more middle types within its scope."

Rachel has found sporadic instances of indirect middles with θη, too, but not enough to say that the usage is actually grammaticalized. There are a handful of instances of θη with verbs of smelling, if I remember right.
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Re: Mathewson and Porter - Voice and Mood: A Linguistic Approach

Post by MAubrey »

I popped over here to share that Rachel's review of Mathewson in JETS has been published. JETS reached out and asked Rachel to review Mathewson. It wasn't a fun review for her to write. It's published in JETS 65:3 (2022).
Stephen Carlson wrote: November 24th, 2021, 2:35 pm The θη form is in a process of expansion during the Koine period. I can see why a classicist would want to hang on its classical value, but it eventually takes over the aorist middle forms as in the modern language. It is really hard to capture this in-progress change in our texts. Perhaps the best way is Allan’s, who categorizes the middles and notes where the θη form has taken over. There also seem to be phonological patterns as well. In any case, there is a lot of memorization.
Rachel's GVR chapters documents changes into the post-classical period in her figures.
Image
Rachel Aubrey (2016) wrote:Adapted from Allan (2003, 156). See also the semantic map for the distribution of sigmatic mid. aor. and (θ)η aor. in Homer (147) compared to the map of their distribution in Classical (156) We see (θ)η extending its roots from Homer through Classical to Hellenistic as it includes more middle types within its scope."
Rachel has found sporadic instances of indirect middles with θη, too, but not enough to say that the usage is actually grammaticalized. There are a handful of instances of θη with verbs of smelling, if I remember right.
Mike Aubrey, Linguist
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Re: Mathewson and Porter - Voice and Mood: A Linguistic Approach

Post by Jonathan Robie »

This part of Rachel's review went way over my head. Which is not surprising, since I have never really read Halliday and am very shallow in SFL. But could you flesh this out a little?

Has anyone explained voice and mood for NT Greek well using Halliday's SFL model? Could it be done better? What would that look like?
Rachel wrote:The book evinces little
attempt to explain SFL at a deeper level of theoretical intention or motivation.
Concepts and terminology are simplistically mapped onto Greek morphosyntactic
forms in a one-to-one fashion, losing SFL’s explanatory potential for the semantics
of Greek voice or mood. These changes appear driven by a desire to compensate
for the English focus in Halliday’s Introduction to Functional Grammar, but instead they
sacrifice important insights SFL has to offer for understanding language generally.
In the voice section, this behavior appears most clearly in applying Halliday’s
Ergative Model. Mathewson changes definitions and applies terms at will, with little
regard for Halliday’s underlying goals, including terms like “medium,” “range,” and
“ergative.” SFL’s “medium” is used to define the role of the subject for all middle
and passive verbs (p. 52). “Range” is equated with the object of all transitive middle
verbs (p. 66). He reverses Halliday’s definition of “ergative” entirely, with little ex-
planation or justification. He then assigns it to all middle verbs (pp. 29–31, 38),

thus, jettisoning insights from SFL’s notion of ergativity as describing interactions
between certain (semantic) process types and how participant roles are realized in
discourse (M. A. K. Halliday and Christian M. I. M. Matthiessen, Halliday’s Introduc-
tion to Functional Grammar [New York: Routledge, 2014], 336–54).

Mathewson’s reversal of Halliday’s “ergativity” creates trouble for NT stu-
dents and scholars studying SFL, to say nothing of other linguistic traditions. Halli-
day’s own nonstandard use of “ergative” has already received decades of critique.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
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