Some words in the middle-passive seem to have endings that suggest ‘being been’ as a sense of the word, like προσκείμενος ‘being placed by for oneself/being been placed by’.
Should ‘being been’ be changed to ‘having been’ in English?
(If my example sucks, I apologize in advance.)
Gee, I thought this question would being been answered by now. I’m being been pretty patient. Oh well, I guess I’ll just keep doing what I’m being been doing.
Ah well!
I guess others like me didn’t really grasp what your question was.
“being been” makes no sense in English and so cannot be a translation of anything in Greek.
προσκείμενος is a present middle participle from the verb πρόσκειμαι which serves as the passive for προστίθημι meaning “to be placed or laid by or upon, lie by or upon,”. See LSJ https://logeion.uchicago.edu/πρόσκειμαι.
So I am not sure where you have got your idea of “being been”.
Thanks for the reply, maybe I should have been more clear. I read in a textbook that the way to think of present* middle-passive participles is ‘being verbed for oneself/being verbed’.
But προσκείμενος (for example, because this applies to all the ones that start with ‘be’) means ‘to be placed upon’. So the above paradigm would be 'being placed upon for oneself/being been placed upon (passive form of ‘be placed upon’ in the form of the example).
You could say it might mean ‘being placed upon for oneself/being placed’ but that seems to be leaving out a word.
Any word that means “be verbed” seems to translate to “being been verbed” on the passive side.
Take another meaning of the same word: urge. So that would be in the form ‘being urged for oneself/being urged’. But with ‘be’ the second part seems like ‘being been’.
Or am I just totally wrong here?
Cheers
Oh and btw I wasn’t really complaining in the above post, I was just trying to use ‘being been’ in a few sentences, lol.
*edit
I read in a textbook that the way to think of perfect middle-passive participles is ‘being verbed for oneself/being verbed’.
Perhaps you could point me in the direction of this textbook.
If we go back to your original post “προσκείμενος” is a present middle participle but now you are talking about perfect participles. The perfect broadly refers to a present state arising from a past action and introduces some complexities. so we have τέθνηκε (perfect) ‘he is in the state of being dead, i.e. he is dead,’ but less obviously γέγηθα ‘I am glad’, δέδοικα ‘I am afraid’, εἴωθα ‘I am accustomed’
The middle voice indicates that in some sense the interests of the subject of the verb are involved in the action of the verb. This can lead to a variety of meanings. for example πείθω ‘I persuade’ πείθομαι ‘I persuade myself, I trust, I believe in’
I think rather than trying to generalise it would be helpful if you could provide some examples where you don’t understand the meaning of the middle (or the passive) of a particular verb. Often the meaning of middle verbs can be tricky. I don’t think you can come up with a simple generic solution here.
If you know all this please just ignore.
κεῖμαι is passive and so is πρόσκειμαι. Not middle. What we gloss as “urge, solicit” and “press hard” are the same even, imo, despite the English active glosses [think, “leaning against”] except in the rare and exceptional c. acc. mentioned in LSJ, where it’s treated like a deponent.
Everywhere “being been” (nonsense in English) is mentioned above should be “having been”. προσκείμενος is “having been placed besides” or “resting besides” or up against/attached instead of besides.
Thucydides: καὶ ἡμεῖς οὔτε ἔθεμεν τὸν νόμον οὔτε κειμένῳ πρῶτοι ἐχρησάμεθα.
And we didn’t ἔθεμεν the law, nor were we first to use what was κειμένῳ.
How about these?
γεωργούμενος (part sg pres mp masc nom) being a husbandman for oneself/being been a husbandman
δυναμένους (part pl pres mp masc acc) being able for oneself/being been able
ἡττώμενοι (part pl pres mp masc voc/nom) being inferior for oneself/being been inferior
I’m not an expert on any of these words, and I’m sure you’re right - ‘being been’ doesn’t make sense. Should I change them to ‘having been’?
Avocado:
As jeidsath noted, προσ-κείμενος is actually passive, not middle. But (προσ-)κεῖμαι is a rather unusual verb in that it has no corresponding active form and no present tense either.
In general, as seneca said, “the middle voice indicates that in some sense the interests of the subject of the verb are involved in the action of the verb.” And middles are not to be confused with passives, even when they’re identical in form (as they are in the present tense).
Your latest examples lump middle and passive together by labeling them “mp”. This will lead to endless confusion and you’ll end up as you began, tying yourself up in knots.
So no, don’t go changing the meaningless “being been” to “having been” (which is a past-tense passive participle in English). Just use a better book.
The middle-passive designations are from the Logeion and Perseus websites. I know what middle is (generally) and what passive is. I am trying to give a general idea of what the sense of the word is. You can’t blame me for calling something mp when that’s what the websites say, I don’t know anything about the words other than what is in the dictionaries.
While it would be nice to know the deeper meanings and usages of the words like you learned folk, some of us have to make do with what we got. 
For me, I encountered what seemed to be “being been” and didn’t think it made sense, so I asked for help. I’m doing my best.
I’m still trying to figure the middle out. It’s one of the hardest thing about the language, imo.
The websites are a bit unreliable, unfortunately. They often say “mp” due to the endings, whether the word is ever used as a middle or not. Inside the entries, it’s a different story. In an LSJ dictionary entry, for example, where it says “Med.”, you can generally rely on that, or in the Cambridge Lexicon “Mid.” and so on. These aren’t in the forms section of the entries, but in the meanings section. Ie. “δανείζω…2 || MID. (of persons) borrow” means that active δανείζω is “I do a δάνειον [loan]” (I lend), but middle δανείζομαι is “I do a δάνειον for me” (I borrow).
Now, since the dictionaries have mostly chopped up every text that you’re ever going to read, you can get by on middle forms by getting to a word in reading, looking it up in the dictionary, and checking what the dictionary says. This is what most 99% of people do, in fact.
The explanations in the grammars have a combination of useful and less useful information about the middle. I like Goodwin’s explanation from 1242 forwards as much as anything, especially at an early level, and he needs to be read. Link: https://archive.org/details/greekgrammar00gooduoft/page/266/mode/2up
If you want to understand the middle like an Attic Greek understood it, a living and generative element of his language which he could use without resorting to a dictionary even once, and coin new appropriate uses of on the fly…well, you have to read lots and lots. Maybe that will be enough, I don’t know. Like I said, I’m still getting there. The spirit of the middle, I begin to suspect, is related to a different consciousness of man in his world that the ancients had from what we do. While an active verb discusses a gross action, a middle verb is about more than simple self-reference, but is about conceiving the agent as an en-souled creature whose intention and experience are taken into account by the action. Εχ.
ἀποπέμπει - He sends off
ἀποπέμπεται - He sends away
Mechanically, this is the same action. But they have different contexts. The first can be used anywhere the second is used, but the second only where there is a mental image of the agent and his presence, which he is clearing of whomever is sent off. If he says “get out of my sight”, he is doing the second. If he says “I need you to be in Astoria tomorrow to work on a contract”, he is doing the first.
As jeidsath says, it can be hard to develop a good sense of the use of the middle voice as distinct from the active; and it can vary from verb to verb. But his example of αποπέμπει (active) vs. αποπέμπεται (middle) makes a good point of entry. The preposition από means “away from,” and αποπέμπει just means “sends away,” plain and simple. In the context of divorcing a wife, however, you might—or might not—use the middle, αποπέμπεται. (Whether or not the agent is then conceived of as “an en-souled creature,” as jeidsath rather fancifully imagines, is another matter.)
So the difference between the active and the middle can be hard to get a handle on. But the difference between the middle and the passive is much more straightforward. αποπέμπεται may be middle, in which case it will likely have a direct object (e.g. τὴν γυναῖκα αποπέμπεται “he sends away his wife”), but it may alternatively be passive: e.g. ἡ γυνὴ αποπέμπεται “the wife is being sent away.” It may seem odd—very odd—that one and the same form can have two such totally different meanings, but there it is, that’s the way the ancient Greek language turned out.
So whenever you see an “mp” form (e.g. αποπέμπεται), you have to decide whether it’s middle or passive. The context will usually make it clear which it is, but it will be one or the other, not both.
In my English, “send away” is to dismiss or terminate an employee or separate a relative (that is, the middle). The unmarked version, for me, is “send off” (so, the active).
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/send_away
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/send_off
Other people may speak their English differently, of course.
Well, thanks again for the advice. Looks like I’ll have to figure out something other than “being been” as I go.
Cheers