sccarlson wrote:Classifying something as "deponent" isn't really helpful. It just means a middle-morphology verb whose active form is so rare or missing that you have to look it up under its middle form (here, δέχομαι) in the lexicon.
The rubric "passive [or middle] in form but active in meaning" is also unhelpful, because it imposes an English active-passive system onto Greek, which is more of an active-middle system. It is true that Greek middles (including deponents) are often glossed with English actives, but that doesn't mean that the meaning is "active." Another way to look at it is that English simply prefers lexically active verbs to express the same meaning where Greek prefers a middle verb.
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This approach described here is fairly modern and won't be mentioned in older textbooks. Typically, the older approach is to label δέχομαι as deponent and force you memorize its English active gloss. Now, this older approach doesn't really explain why the form is middle, but it supplies you with a translation.
Stephen
Everything Stephen has said is correct and helpful. Just one or two comments here:
1. The distinction is
formal and
historical. By historical I simply mean that it looks back to a (somewhat theoretical) period when most verbs had active, passive and middle (reflexive) forms (Carl Conrad will inform you that even these traditional categories are somewhat suspect). By formal I simply mean that it's a distinction in form.
2. Deponents "lay aside" their active forms, and we are stuck in Greek with the middle and passive forms. The middle was originally the form of the verb used to express fully reflexive action, or action somehow "in the interest of the subject." Most middle deponents are verbs which were likely used so often in that form that active dropped out altogether or was used in such a radically different sense that even contemporary speakers felt it was really a different word, such as πορεύω, to take across, to convey, and πορευόμαι, to convey oneself, to go...
3. I still use the formula that Stephen suggests is bad, mainly because when teaching a beginning language you have to lie a lot...
![Shocked :shock:](./images/smilies/icon_eek.gif)
It's actually a helpful description that enables the student to get a quick handle on the idea and to know what forms to expect from the verb, though it certainly doesn't account for all the linguistic realities. The way to handle this at the beginning is simply to learn what each word means on a case by case basis, and to see how the word is actually used in context. Here is where learning true definitions and seeing the word used in multiple contexts really helps.
As for Wallace, et al., I think it's best not to worry overly much about various categories and conceptualizations. Develop a good working knowledge of the language first, and then you can worry about all the metalanguage that people like to use. The problem with many students is that they substitute the metalanguage for learning the real language, and then proceed to give all sorts of, ahem, interesting exegetical insights based more on the metalanguage...
![Rolling Eyes :roll:](./images/smilies/icon_rolleyes.gif)
N.E. Barry Hofstetter, M.A., Th.M.
Ph.D. Student U of FL
Instructor of Latin
Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy
καὶ σὺ τὸ σὸν ποιήσεις κἀγὼ τὸ ἐμόν. ἆρον τὸ σὸν καὶ ὕπαγε.