questions about verbal aspect and deponency

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Sofronios
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questions about verbal aspect and deponency

Post by Sofronios »

well, I dont know whether this question is discussed already or out of topic, but please allow me to proceed. because these are two of many things that disturbed me the most in learning greeks

what I want to ask is these two question;
whether anything concerning verbal aspect theory(VAT)
and the validity of deponency as a category is important at all in learning greek?

I am just learning the language, focusing in the biblical/koine greek and my reading ability is still wet behind the ears. but when I came across these what I found is (I dont know how to say in english) many scholarly interpretation about the subject.

what is definition of aspect? is it necesary to distinguish it with aktionsart? how many verbal aspect are there? is perfect/plueperfect tense-form is stative in aspect or just the same in aspect with the present?
should we really consider some middle form in greek that have active meaning in english mind as deponent or not?

so these confuse me as if memorizing basic vocab and morphology is not a daunting task...

how is your(pl) opinion about these? is this question also disturbing those who are learning and already able to read ancient greek?

thx
ὁ δὲ εἶπε· πῶς γὰρ ἂν δυναίμην, ἐὰν μή τις ὁδηγήσῃ με;
Qui ait : Et quomodo possum, si non aliquis ostenderit mihi ?

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Re: questions about verbal aspect and deponency

Post by Markos »

Sofronios wrote:I am just learning the language...
what I want to ask is these two question;
whether anything concerning verbal aspect theory(VAT)
and the validity of deponency as a category is important at all in learning greek?
No, these meta-language questions are not important in learning Greek. Beyond the basics, they do not lead to attaining fluency, and once fluency is attained, you will accept Greek as Greek and will have no need for meta-language analysis. Focus on the territory, not the map.

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Sofronios
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Re: questions about verbal aspect and deponency

Post by Sofronios »

Markos wrote: Focus on the territory, not the map.
roger that! I'll keep that in mind!

so I just need to stick with the traditional view of the grammar without concerning too much about the recent scholarship debate, right?
ὁ δὲ εἶπε· πῶς γὰρ ἂν δυναίμην, ἐὰν μή τις ὁδηγήσῃ με;
Qui ait : Et quomodo possum, si non aliquis ostenderit mihi ?

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Re: questions about verbal aspect and deponency

Post by anphph »

I have no experience teaching specifically NT Greek. However, I read one of the articles that was being cited all over for the relevance of deponency, and the author concluded, in the practical results for the teaching, that
What does my radical suggestion look like? Rather than presenting deponent verbs as a separate category, we should simply teach the middle voice. We should explain the middle voice is used to express the subject’s involve ment with the action (and is not typically reflexive). If any here are unconvinced by my ra dical call, then you coul d still use “deponent” as one use of the middle rather than a separate ca tegory. But rather than accounting for 75% or more of middle forms as is typically argued, I hope I have shown that far fewer verbs, if any, could be classified as de ponent. Therefore, it is at best a subset of the middle.

When I taught the middle voice about two w eeks ago, I simply explained that we have nothing comparable in English and gave them a simple explanation of the meaning. I then told them that they will meet tw o kinds of verbs that are in th e middle form: (1) verbs that are always or nearly always in the middle form because of their lexical idea (typically called “deponent”); and (2) verbs that are sometimes active and sometimes middle.
Source: http://jonathanpennington.com/wp-conten ... _Voice.pdf

As far as I know that is already the case for Classical Greek. The Middle Voice is introduced relatively early in the course, certainly in the first year, probably in the first semester. No verbs that are Middle are called "Deponent". The word deponent, which may be irrelevant, is not used for "passive in form but active in meaning" but for "exclusively middle in form, active/middle in meaning (with an emphasis on the sense of "middle"), and lacking an active form". The verb αἰτέω/αἰτέομαι would have never been described as deponent. The world simply means "having put down [the use of the active form]".

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Re: questions about verbal aspect and deponency

Post by Markos »

Sofronios wrote:
Markos wrote: Focus on the territory, not the map.
roger that! I'll keep that in mind!

so I just need to stick with the traditional view of the grammar without concerning too much about the recent scholarship debate, right?
Yes, that would be my view, anyway. Unless you are interested in the fine points of linguistic analysis, I would stick with Smyth. There is grammar there enough.

My view is that grammar/metalanguage is at best like training wheels on a bicylce. Some people want to get rid of the training wheels as soon as possible. Other want to focus on improving the training wheels.

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Re: questions about verbal aspect and deponency

Post by Sofronios »

MiguelM wrote: Source: http://jonathanpennington.com/wp-conten ... _Voice.pdf

As far as I know that is already the case for Classical Greek. The Middle Voice is introduced relatively early in the course, certainly in the first year, probably in the first semester. No verbs that are Middle are called "Deponent". The word deponent, which may be irrelevant, is not used for "passive in form but active in meaning" but for "exclusively middle in form, active/middle in meaning (with an emphasis on the sense of "middle"), and lacking an active form". The verb αἰτέω/αἰτέομαι would have never been described as deponent. The world simply means "having put down [the use of the active form]".
Thx for the link.. it clarifies the matter..
so it is safe to assume that deponency is 'dead' right? if the classical doesnt used it so should the koine
ὁ δὲ εἶπε· πῶς γὰρ ἂν δυναίμην, ἐὰν μή τις ὁδηγήσῃ με;
Qui ait : Et quomodo possum, si non aliquis ostenderit mihi ?

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Re: questions about verbal aspect and deponency

Post by Sofronios »

Markos wrote: Yes, that would be my view, anyway. Unless you are interested in the fine points of linguistic analysis, I would stick with Smyth. There is grammar there enough.

My view is that grammar/metalanguage is at best like training wheels on a bicylce. Some people want to get rid of the training wheels as soon as possible. Other want to focus on improving the training wheels.
surely my interest is not the linguistic analysis (sounds scary :D), but yes, I am looking forward to Smyth.
thx for the help!
ὁ δὲ εἶπε· πῶς γὰρ ἂν δυναίμην, ἐὰν μή τις ὁδηγήσῃ με;
Qui ait : Et quomodo possum, si non aliquis ostenderit mihi ?

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Re: questions about verbal aspect and deponency

Post by John W. »

Markos wrote: My view is that grammar/metalanguage is at best like training wheels on a bicylce. Some people want to get rid of the training wheels as soon as possible. Other want to focus on improving the training wheels.
Markos - with respect, I'm not sure the analogy is entirely accurate. Trying to discuss the subtleties of interpretation of a difficult author (e.g. Thucydides) without some recourse to grammatical terminology (or 'metalanguage', as the fashionable term apparently now is) would be rather difficult, and to my mind both pointless and needlessly self-restricting.

In the case of my favourite author, could one really say that the eminent scholars who have edited and/or commented on Thucydides, such as Poppo, Kruger, Stahl, Classen, Steup, Gomme and Dover, all of whom used 'metalanguage' in discussing the text, were overly reliant on 'training wheels'?

Best wishes,

John
Last edited by John W. on Fri Mar 13, 2015 11:56 am, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: questions about verbal aspect and deponency

Post by anphph »

Sofronios wrote:
MiguelM wrote: Source: http://jonathanpennington.com/wp-conten ... _Voice.pdf

As far as I know that is already the case for Classical Greek. The Middle Voice is introduced relatively early in the course, certainly in the first year, probably in the first semester. No verbs that are Middle are called "Deponent". The word deponent, which may be irrelevant, is not used for "passive in form but active in meaning" but for "exclusively middle in form, active/middle in meaning (with an emphasis on the sense of "middle"), and lacking an active form". The verb αἰτέω/αἰτέομαι would have never been described as deponent. The world simply means "having put down [the use of the active form]".
Thx for the link.. it clarifies the matter..
so it is safe to assume that deponency is 'dead' right? if the classical doesnt used it so should the koine
That's not what I said. I said that the word "deponent" is not used for verbs that are in the middle voice. The overarching problem expressed in that article was that the author wanted to avoid introducing the Middle Voice too early, for fear of confusing the students. Well that seems to me to create a problem and then to wonder how it got there. To my mind the word deponency does have a sense, though not exactly paralel to the Latin grammar parlance from where it was taken:

A Latin deponent verb is one which only has a passive form, but is active in meaning (this contrasts with semi-deponent verbs, which have active forms in the imperfect modes but passive in the perfect ones, eg gaudeo).

A Greek deponent verb I would call a verb which has no active form. The origin of the confusion seems to be that in some modes and tenses there is no distinction between the middle and the passive, and so it would seem to mimic the Latin use. But truth of the matter is that in others, for example in the aorist, there are distinct forms for the middle and the passive. δέχω* does not exist, but the verb δέχομαι has a middle aorist in ἐδεξάμην and a passive aorist in ἐδέχθην. It makes sense to call it a deponent verb because it has dropped the active form altogether, but trying to coalesce the problems into the issue of the middle voice seems to be a simplification.

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Re: questions about verbal aspect and deponency

Post by Markos »

John W. wrote:
Markos wrote: My view is that grammar/metalanguage is at best like training wheels on a bicycle. Some people want to get rid of the training wheels as soon as possible. Other want to focus on improving the training wheels.
Markos - with respect, I'm not sure the analogy is entirely accurate. Trying to discuss the subtleties of interpretation of a difficult author (e.g. Thucydides) without some recourse to grammatical terminology (or 'metalanguage', as the fashionable term apparently now is) would be rather difficult, and to my mind both pointless and needlessly self-restricting.

In the case of my favourite author, could one really say that the eminent scholars who have edited and/or commented on Thucydides, such as Poppo, Kruger, Stahl, Classen, Steup, Gomme and Dover, all of whom used 'metalanguage' in discussing the text, were overly reliant on 'training wheels'?
Hi, John,

You are correct in the sense that all analogies can only go so far (maybe "Map is not territory" is a better one) but in this case I am NOT telling Sophronios that he needs to avoid the training wheels all together. Nor am I accusing anyone of being overly reliant on the training wheels (that is not the issue I have with metalanguage.) All I am saying is that IF at some point you want to jettison the training wheels/metalanguage, it does not matter if the training wheels are up to date.

When you are first learning Greek, you probably need terms for why βούλομαι and θέλω have different endings. You can say that one is a deponent, and move on to reading Greek, or you can say that one is marked and one is not marked for subject affectedness. But then you have to read a bunch of English to figure out (and debate) what THIS means. (I actually HAVE read a bunch of this stuff and it represents several months of my life that I will never get back.) IF your goal is to attain fluency ASAP, it makes sense to use the training wheels that go on and come off more quickly. Smyth is great for this, I think, the linguists Sophronius references not so much.

Now, the extent to which the training wheels are necessary for analysis, and the extent to which analysis is necessary to establish meaning, is, I guess, a different question.

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Re: questions about verbal aspect and deponency

Post by mwh »

What I maybe should have written in reply to Sophronios’ first post:

Aspect. You will unquestionably be a better reader if you learn to appreciate the aspectual difference (often important, sometimes less so) between aorist and present in non-indicative forms. Unless you’re into linguistics you don’t need to bother yourself with theory or definition. And I shouldn’t worry too much about aspect at all until you’ve mastered grammatical basics.

Deponency. This is a term that’s meaningful in Latin, but not in Greek. A term, and a concept, that you will need to learn, as others have indicated, is the middle, as distinct from the active. Also the consistencies and inconsistencies of the relationship between form and meaning. In Latin it's simple, in Greek, not so much.

Terminology (Markos’ “meta-language”). You’ll encounter some bad or unnecessary terms (“deponency” is one, "metalanguage" may be another), but everyone who learns Greek finds it useful to know what is meant by a “verb,” for instance, or a “noun,” “passive,” “genitive,” and a whole host of other “metalinguistic” terms. It’s helpful to be able to slot things into recognized (and named) categories, and absolutely indispensable when it comes to talking about the language. They’re not just for beginners! Of course the metalanguage does not determine meaning (otherwise it would not be “meta”), but meaning is dependent on correct recognition of the classifications that the metalanguage identifies. If you mistake a genitive for a nominative, you will end up with the wrong meaning.

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Re: questions about verbal aspect and deponency

Post by Sofronios »

MiguelM wrote:
Sofronios wrote:
MiguelM wrote: Source: http://jonathanpennington.com/wp-conten ... _Voice.pdf

As far as I know that is already the case for Classical Greek. The Middle Voice is introduced relatively early in the course, certainly in the first year, probably in the first semester. No verbs that are Middle are called "Deponent". The word deponent, which may be irrelevant, is not used for "passive in form but active in meaning" but for "exclusively middle in form, active/middle in meaning (with an emphasis on the sense of "middle"), and lacking an active form". The verb αἰτέω/αἰτέομαι would have never been described as deponent. The world simply means "having put down [the use of the active form]".
Thx for the link.. it clarifies the matter..
so it is safe to assume that deponency is 'dead' right? if the classical doesnt used it so should the koine
That's not what I said. I said that the word "deponent" is not used for verbs that are in the middle voice. The overarching problem expressed in that article was that the author wanted to avoid introducing the Middle Voice too early, for fear of confusing the students. Well that seems to me to create a problem and then to wonder how it got there. To my mind the word deponency does have a sense, though not exactly paralel to the Latin grammar parlance from where it was taken:

A Latin deponent verb is one which only has a passive form, but is active in meaning (this contrasts with semi-deponent verbs, which have active forms in the imperfect modes but passive in the perfect ones, eg gaudeo).

A Greek deponent verb I would call a verb which has no active form. The origin of the confusion seems to be that in some modes and tenses there is no distinction between the middle and the passive, and so it would seem to mimic the Latin use. But truth of the matter is that in others, for example in the aorist, there are distinct forms for the middle and the passive. δέχω* does not exist, but the verb δέχομαι has a middle aorist in ἐδεξάμην and a passive aorist in ἐδέχθην. It makes sense to call it a deponent verb because it has dropped the active form altogether, but trying to coalesce the problems into the issue of the middle voice seems to be a simplification.
my apologize for my misunderstanding. Thank you for the explanation. I think I should get to learn the classical sooner.
ὁ δὲ εἶπε· πῶς γὰρ ἂν δυναίμην, ἐὰν μή τις ὁδηγήσῃ με;
Qui ait : Et quomodo possum, si non aliquis ostenderit mihi ?

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Re: questions about verbal aspect and deponency

Post by Sofronios »

mwh wrote:What I maybe should have written in reply to Sophronios’ first post:

Aspect. You will unquestionably be a better reader if you learn to appreciate the aspectual difference (often important, sometimes less so) between aorist and present in non-indicative forms. Unless you’re into linguistics you don’t need to bother yourself with theory or definition. And I shouldn’t worry too much about aspect at all until you’ve mastered grammatical basics.

Deponency. This is a term that’s meaningful in Latin, but not in Greek. A term, and a concept, that you will need to learn, as others have indicated, is the middle, as distinct from the active. Also the consistencies and inconsistencies of the relationship between form and meaning. In Latin it's simple, in Greek, not so much.

Terminology (Markos’ “meta-language”). You’ll encounter some bad or unnecessary terms (“deponency” is one, "metalanguage" may be another), but everyone who learns Greek finds it useful to know what is meant by a “verb,” for instance, or a “noun,” “passive,” “genitive,” and a whole host of other “metalinguistic” terms. It’s helpful to be able to slot things into recognized (and named) categories, and absolutely indispensable when it comes to talking about the language. They’re not just for beginners! Of course the metalanguage does not determine meaning (otherwise it would not be “meta”), but meaning is dependent on correct recognition of the classifications that the metalanguage identifies. If you mistake a genitive for a nominative, you will end up with the wrong meaning.

Thank you for the help. I'll focus on the basics for today's own trouble is sufficient.
ὁ δὲ εἶπε· πῶς γὰρ ἂν δυναίμην, ἐὰν μή τις ὁδηγήσῃ με;
Qui ait : Et quomodo possum, si non aliquis ostenderit mihi ?

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