Deponent Verbs

[easternugget]

My Biblical Greek teacher believes there are no deponent verbs. He is constantly telling us about how deponent verbs actually have a reflexive middle sense. He wants to do away with the classification of "deponent." I am curious of what people here think of about that.

[IreneY]

Hi, I am not quite sure what you teacher means by "reflective middle sense".
What about such verbs as ὑπισχνοῦμαι (middle voice) which I cannot fathom how it can be said to have another sense that the one it has. Or βο?λομαι for that matter.
Just trying to clarify matters, that's all.

[annis]

He wants to do away with the classification of "deponent."

Excellent! So do I.

I am curious of what people here think of about that.

I would agree with him. I don't know how net literate your teacher is, but he might be familiar with Carl Conrad's opinions on the subject, Propositions Concerning Ancient Greek Voice.

[easternugget]

Oops, I meant to say reflexive. With a lot of the words that are deponent, the action tends to affect the speaker. It can be seen in βο?λομαι a little (I am working off of Mounce's definition "I plan/intend). When you plan something, usually, the plans involve you or benefit you in some way. With intending to do something, it could almost be rewritten "I intend for myself to do." Sadly, I am not familiar with ὑπισχνοῦμαι. Hopefully, that makes a little more sense for you.

[auctor]

Dear easternugget,

That really depends on how you, or your teacher, define 'deponent'. If you understand Latin grammar fully, then the notion of a deponent verb probably doesn't make much sense in Greek--because the fall-back to the middle voice precludes that. But, there are many Greek verbs which do not have an active 'form' in the future, nor aorist, nor even (plu)perfect tenses--they have active meanings but medio-passive forms. If you and your teacher are happy to understand that, then yes the teacher is correct. If you, and your teacher, do not understand the difference, as the Latin grammarians explain it, then you will not be disadvantaged--you'll just have more exceptions to learn!

The more important thing is to understand how, and why, your target language works--pidgeon-holing is handy for some and a nuisance for others.

Paul

Will, I've been assured that I shall be able to read O' Neill by the w/e--I look forward to doing so.

[GlottalGreekGeek]

Well, I got a good grasp on the middle voice in Greek when I realized it is frequently similar to French reflexive verbs (though not always - one language's grammer almost never has perfect correlation with another language's grammer). French has its idiomatically reflexive verbs, just as Greek has its idiomatically reflexive verbs. Though I do not argue for or against the elimination of the term "deponent", I admit I do not think in terms of deponent verbs myself - it is certainly a term one could manage without.

[IreneY]

Now that I finally understand (it's April and I am already over my annual 'dumb days' quota) I have to say that I agree and we should change the greek term too (meaning the same really, coming all the way from the Hellenistic times).


Finding another term however would be really useful if only for classification reasons (grammatically speaking) as auctor already mentioned, even if just as a sub-section of irregular verbs