Jump to content

Greek deponent futures


Λύχνις Δαν

Recommended Posts

Hi ya,

 

Is anyone aware of a resource, or other source, of a list, or the data to comprise one, of deponent futures, verbs having active presents but deponent (morphologically mid/passive active) futures ?

 

Thx

D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi ya,

 

Is anyone aware of a resource, or other source, of a list, or the data to comprise one, of deponent futures, verbs having active presents but deponent (morphologically mid/passive active) futures ?

 

Thx

D

Greetings, Daniel.

 

My first observation may be needless, but I give it anyway: IMHO the whole concept of "deponent" is largely erroneous, unless the meaning of "deponent" is merely that the active voice morphology is not used with the verb. I think it is generally an error to assert that a morphologically middle verb has active significance. I think the usual explanation is that one does not understand the Greek mind with this verb and that one is trying to force English (or one's native language) onto Greek.

 

Thus you want a list of verbs which have active morphology in the present, but no example of future active morphology is found with that verb in the published ancient Greek texts. I suppose that the lexicons will tell you for each particular verb whether this is so for all verbs. However, it will be time consuming to look up all the verbs! And there is the possibly erroneous conclusion that because a given verb has no active form written in the extant literature, such a form did not exist.

 

I am thinking that some kind of search string with Accordance could move you towards that data. You could compare the list of future active verbs in the NT with the list of verbs. That comparison would leave you with a list of verbs that don't have an active exemplar. Of course that doesn't tell you which verbs just happen not to have a future active in the NT (though future active may have existed for the verb in koine Greek -- but no one used it in the NT).

 

Good luck.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hm, good question. I don't know of any, unfortunately - what do you need it for?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey Enoch,

 

Thanx for this.

 

It's certainly worth avoiding the error of assuming that the morphology governs the sense. Thus perhaps if one were to be highly abstract about it one could speak of morphology class 1 and 2 and so on. And then say that this or that verb uses class 1 for present act, class 2 for fut act and so on. But these terms have history and some utility because of it so long as one does not read too much into them. So yes I meant that the fut act used what is generally considered a mid/pass morphology. I also think that some verbs lend themselves to middle use simply by their semantic nature. Regarding the issue of Greek rather than English mindset, very true and it's a very hard thing to get to without growing up in the language which is a tad tricky these days.

 

I checked LSJ and BDAG and GNT28T. The morphology of the future in the lexica is not identified as deponent though they do so for presents in some (how many ?) cases. GNT28-T is not tagged for deponency. This last point is interesting because of a recent (several months ago) discussion here concerning 2nd perfects. Rex Kovisto who does tagging for Oaktree commented that scholarly opinion concerning the 2nd morphologies was at the very least divided. Thus it seems that they are likely to move to simply tagging aorists and perfects and considering 1st and 2nd merely to be variant morphology. That is rather to my point above about morphological classes and part of the reason I make that statement.

 

Thanks for the idea on the search. I also thought that Darin Franklin's handy little regex tool might help here, if I can construct regexes for the relevant future morphologies that I want, and the corresponding presents. It will take some monkeying around. I may be able to it in Accordance as it stands though too. The big advantage of that would be that I might be able to concoct a multi-tab search that could correlate the mid/pass fut with the act presents, albeit where they actually exist in the corpora. On that point I have AF in Greek and Philo and Josephus to play with also, oh and the LXX.

 

Luck may indeed be required.

 

By the way, do you know of a decent Doric grammar ?

 

Thx

D

Edited by Daniel Semler
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hm, good question. I don't know of any, unfortunately - what do you need it for?

 

Fundamentally I'm a nutter !

 

Actually part of what I am interested in is that I ran across one and while a couple are commented on in one or two grammars and MBG, there is nothing especially detailed on this. I am trying to learn Greek, and I mean really learn it, so a lot of things arouse my curiosity. For example there is an interesting piece in Robertson concerning Doric futures in connection with deponent futures. I am not sure if I have understood that piece completely which means of course that I have not. But I am wondering if the deponent future is a diachronic hangover if you like. Actually a 'diachronic hangover' sounds pretty dreadful :)

 

thx

D

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey Enoch,

 

Thanx for this.

 

It's certainly worth avoiding the error of assuming that the morphology governs the sense. Thus perhaps if one were to be highly abstract about it one could speak of morphology class 1 and 2 and so on. And then say that this or that verb uses class 1 for present act, class 2 for fut act and so on. But these terms have history and some utility because of it so long as one does not read too much into them. So yes I meant that the fut act used what is generally considered a mid/pass morphology. I also think that some verbs lend themselves to middle use simply by their semantic nature. Regarding the issue of Greek rather than English mindset, very true and it's a very hard thing to get to without growing up in the language which is a tad tricky these days.

 

I checked LSJ and BDAG and GNT28T. The morphology of the future in the lexica is not identified as deponent though they do so for presents in some (how many ?) cases. GNT28-T is not tagged for deponency. This last point is interesting because of a recent (several months ago) discussion here concerning 2nd perfects. Rex Kovisto who does tagging for Oaktree commented that scholarly opinion concerning the 2nd morphologies was at the very least divided. Thus it seems that they are likely to move to simply tagging aorists and perfects and considering 1st and 2nd merely to be variant morphology. That is rather to my point above about morphological classes and part of the reason I make that statement.

 

Thanks for the idea on the search. I also thought that Darin Franklin's handy little regex tool might help here, if I can construct regexes for the relevant future morphologies that I want, and the corresponding presents. It will take some monkeying around. I may be able to it in Accordance as it stands though too. The big advantage of that would be that I might be able to concoct a multi-tab search that could correlate the mid/pass fut with the act presents, albeit where they actually exist in the corpora. On that point I have AF in Greek and Philo and Josephus to play with also, oh and the LXX.

 

Luck may indeed be required.

 

By the way, do you know of a decent Doric grammar ?

 

Thx

D

Let's see, Daniel.

You want a decent Grammar for Dorks. A dork would not want an indecent grammar! hum.

LOL

 

You might take a look at Carl Darling Buck (whose IndoEuropean root book I would love to have).

Many years ago I sat in a class on Greek Dialects. I think the text was by C D Buck. It may be the one to which I link below.

I don't know how useful this will be.

 

https://archive.org/details/cu31924031214822

 

He may have another book, an anthology of exemplars of Doric.

As I recall the choruses in the Greek tragedians are written in Doric -- I don't know how authentic the Doric is. Here is an article on Doric choruses:

 

http://www.aoidoi.org/articles/choral_doric.html

 

I am thinking that a high percentage of the Doric distinctness from Attic is phonological rather than other grammatical.

 

I take it that the ancient Greeks wrote what they heard. In modern times English writers all generally write the same, somewhat pretending that it is all one language. Imagine if a Texan wrote Huckleberry Hound Texan, a Scot wrote what he spoke, an Indian wrote as Indians speak, Africans wrote English as they speak it. We would have a hard time reading each other's writings. Compounded with the problem is that we write English largely as it was spoken hundreds of years ago, not as it is spoken today.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Many thanx for these Enoch. I'll look them up

 

Thx

D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Daniel –

 

For what it's worth, I did a few searches. First, for all NT verbs that are in future middle/deponent – there were 88 of them. I took that list and and searched for the verbs among those that also had future actives. That reduced the list by 10 verbs. Finally, I searched those to find the ones that had present actives. There were 23 of those. Whether there is such a thing as a deponent or not (don't want to get into that debate), and recognizing that some of these are special cases (ἄρχω), you're left with 23 verbs that have middle but no active forms in the future, but do have active forms in the present. That list is small enough that the words can be examined in lexicons.

 

Here they are:

 

ἀναβαίνω

ἀποθνῄσκω

ἀπολαμβάνω

ἄρχω

γινώσκω

διαγινώσκω

διατάσσω

ἐμπίπτω

ἐπιγινώσκω

ἐσθίω

καταβαίνω

κατεσθίω

λαμβάνω

μεταβαίνω

ὁράω

παραλαμβάνω

παρασκευάζω

παρέχω

πίνω

πίπτω

τίκτω

φαίνω

φεύγω

EDIT: There is a problem with that list. It doesn't include the verbs whose lexical forms are active even if the present active does not occur in the NT. Here's a modified, more inclusive list, 46 in all:

αἱρέω

ἀναβαίνω

ἀνέχω

ἀντέχω

ἀποβαίνω

ἀποθνῄσκω

ἀποκόπτω

ἀπολαμβάνω

ἄρχω

ἀφίστημι

βουλεύω

γινώσκω

διαγινώσκω

διατάσσω

διατίθημι

εἰσακούω

ἐκδίδωμι

ἐκφεύγω

ἐμπίπτω

ἐνίστημι

ἐντέλλω

ἐξομολογέω

ἐπανίστημι

ἐπιγινώσκω

ἐσθίω

καταβαίνω

κατεσθίω

κομίζω

κόπτω

λαμβάνω

μεταβαίνω

μετακαλέω

ξυράω

ὁράω

παραλαμβάνω

παρασκευάζω

παρέχω

παύω

περιβάλλω

περιζώννυμι

πίνω

πίπτω

συλλαμβάνω

τίκτω

φαίνω

φεύγω

Edited by Julie Falling
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey Julie,

 

Cool, great ! Many thanx for this. Glad to see it includes the one I found in Hebrews, ἐκφεύγω.

I'll have a better look over this tonight I hope.

Many thanx

D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Check out the edited list. There are only 46. I had done some manually and messed up somewhere, so went back and did it in Accordance.

Edited by Julie Falling
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey Julie,

 

You're a bit of a black-belt at this !!

I've reproduced some of your results but not all. Let me explain in tiresome detail and maybe I can resolve the differences.

 

All the searches were done against GNT28-T to use the old short name.

1st tab : *@[verb future mid ind] -> 88 different forms tabname : FUT MID

2nd tab : [HITS FUT MID]@[verb future act ind] -> 10 forms found that need to be removed, tabname : FUT MID WITH ACT

3rd tab : [HITS FUT MID] <NOT> [HITS FUT MID WITH ACT] -> the difference of 1st and 2nd tabs 78 forms, tabname FUT MID ONLY

4th tab : [HITS FUT MID ONLY] @[verb pres act ind] -> 18 forms, tabname FUT DEP CAND1

 

I'm off from your original of 23 by 5 those being : ἄρχω, διαγινώσκω, διατάσσω, μεταβαίνω and παρασκευάζω.

 

EDIT 22:46 12/16/2014 : I worked this out. You were not restricting your last search to indicative presents and I was. I am not sure I should given that at least one of the five looks like a real candidate.

 

Now those 5 aside for a moment there is an additional issue. You make the comment that futures middles not having presents in the GNT have been excluded in this process and you add another 23. True enough, but how did you find that the missing presents were active ? I have tried taking my FUT MID and excluding all present active lemmas. This would do it with the proviso that one assumes that all the missing presents are active which they are not. But in any case I only get 12 forms so even if I added them all to my 18 I would only get 30, but only 7 have active morphology in the lemma, which would get me to a grand total of 25.

 

Thx

D

Edited by Daniel Semler
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I just tried an English content search on BDAG for this : (Mid .. Fut .. <NOT> <PRECEDED BY> fut) <OR> (fut .. mid .. <NOT> <PRECEDED BY> fut)

 

That finds all the middle futures. They are not all with only active presents but there are only 168 hits and there is quite an overlap with you larger list above. I'll have to work it through more of course.

 

Thx

D

Edited by Daniel Semler
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Daniel –

 

If the lexical form of the verb is active, the verb has an active present, right? Even if the active form never appears in the NT?

 

What puzzles me is that when I do Search 3 the same way you did, I get non-verbs among my hits. Can't figure out why this should happen since I'm searching only among verbs. I get δέ, ἐν, οὖν, and the count is 82 (should be 81 if the 3 strays are added to the 78 legitimate hits). There's got to be something wrong in my set-up or prefs, right?

 

Here are my searches:

 

Search 1 – Tab = Future Middle [VERB future middle] —> 88 verbs (this is the easy one)

 

Search 2 – Tab = w/Fut active [HITS Future Middle] @[verb future active] —> 10 verbs (also easy)

 

Search 3 – Tab = Not w/Fut active [HITS Future Middle] <NOT>[HITS w/Fut active] @[VERB] —> 78 verbs (what a surprise!)

 

If I don't specify @[VERB], a few non-verbs show up among my hits. Why? I also did the same search by just subtracting out the specific verb list from the second search – didn't get the non-verbs that way.

 

Search 4 – Tab = final search? [HITS Not w/Fut active] <NOT> [VERB] @ *μαι —> 46 verbs, just like before. The search was not limited to indicatives. Figured I might miss a rare verb that way.

 

I don't suppose there is way way to reduce the number of steps in this process?

 

I'm going to try to streamline this. Surely it can be done in less than 4 steps. But not today – too many other things to do.

Edited by Julie Falling
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ah thanx Julie is was the <NOT> [VERB]@*μαι that I was missing.

 

Oh regarding 3, I did that query several ways and you do get different stuff. In the end I did [HITS FUT MID]@-[HITS FUT MID WITH ACT] getting 78. But the <NOT> worked for me also so I don't know how you ended up with non-verbs. Oh there was one thing I noticed. The search scope can be a problem. I play with that a little but in the end left it on verse.

 

Anyhow, many thanx for this. Combined with my query from BDAG I have some examples to sift through. And then I can try other corpora.

 

Thx

D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I hope someone will post and explain why I got those non-verb hits.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Exciting stuff, this - too bad I don't have the BDAG or LSJ module yet..

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Julie, I tried repro'ing your 3 extras on Mac and Win to no avail. Just a thought. I am using GNT28-T version 1.4. Is that what you are using ?

 

thx

D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yep. Same text & same version. I created the first tab and then duplicated it to get the other three. If I do the 3rd search this way – [HITS Future Middle]@- [HITS w/Fut active] – I get 85 hits including δέ, εἰς, ἐν, ὁ, and οὖν. This is bizarre.

 

The HITS command creates a word list, right? Since I'm looking only for verbs, in the 1st search I get only verbs. In the second search, I'm using the word list for the first search and looking within it for future actives. I get only verbs, 10 of them. Now I have two verb lists. All the verbs on the shorter list are all on the longer list. I just want to subtract those out. There must be something in my Prefs, but what? Since the first two searches generate lists of verbs, the 3rd should generate a list of verbs, right?

Edited by Julie Falling
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Truly odd - I tried duplicating your tab names in case it was something weird there. No luck.

The scope thing has no effect nor does including bracketed words.

 

I am wondering if there is some sort of corruption in the module. In the 3rd tab if you take a look at examples of the non-verbs are they close to verbs, perhaps next to them ? Could you paste an example or two here ?

 

Thx

D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I can’t repro this Julie, sorry.

 

Just to say that I think the second way you constructed the list at step 3

 

[HITS Future Middle]@- [HITS w/Fut active]

 

Is preferable to

 

[HITS Future Middle] <NOT>[HITS w/Fut active] @[VERB]

 

Even though they should give the same answer since you are comparing lists of words (I wonder what would happen with this if you had the two forms of the same lexeme in the same verse - that might mess up the results...)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The weird thing is, Ken, searching with @ - wasn't give the right results, either, and it gave me 85 hits instead of 78. Both versions produced non-verbs.

 

When I created the window that got the correct results, I saved it. That was the version that had the 3rd search as [HITS Future Middle] <NOT>[HITS w/Fut active] @[VERB].

 

I closed the window, did other things in Accordance, did other things around the house, then came back after lunch.

 

Want to hear about some real weirdness? Now the 3rd search, done this way – [HITS Future Middle] <NOT>[HITS w/Fut active] –

or this way – [HITS Future Middle] @ -[HITS w/Fut active] – give identical, correct results. No more non-verbs.

 

The final @[VERB] is no longer necessary.

 

None of the other search tabs were changed. I didn't reboot. I updated to Accordance 11.0.3 this morning. I just checked it was after I posted. I don't think I reran the searches afterwards until now. Whatever was off seems to have been corrected. Very, very strange. Something was definitely wrong before. I'm relieved it's OK now.

 

Edited by Julie Falling
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ah - I wonder if this might be related to a HITS bug I filed on 11.0.2 : http://www.accordancebible.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=14580or the one it refers to http://www.accordancebible.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=14508.

 

Or perhaps the fix got both issues.

 

In any case glad it's behaving normally now.

 

Thx

D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Me, too. I'm relieved that it looks like this bug was in the software and not in my brain.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ok so to return to the OP task.

 

I went on and added three more workspaces for other texts and a final Combined workspace. In the first 4 I got candidates from GNT28-T, Apostolic Fathers, Josephus, and Philo. Then the combined workspace finds that there are 5 candidates that all 4 agree on that occur in the GNT28-T.

 

ἀνέχω (ἀνά, ἔχω) to lift, esteem, hinder, stop, bear, suffer, be patient = 15
γινώσκω to know, come to know, recognize = 222
ἐπιγινώσκω (ἐπί, γινώσκω) to know; look upon, witness; recognize, decide = 44
λαμβάνω to take, receive, choose = 258
φεύγω to flee = 29

Now this does not include examples where some of the four are silent but it should exclude one's that any one or more of them excludes.

And φεύγω remains !! Thus likely the compound ἐκφεύγω follows the same morphology.

 

Now honestly what I would really like to be able to do is construct a query across all four texts run as one. That should allow me to eliminate would-be candidates in one text because the future active is used in another text. I think I have a plot to do this with the existing 5 workspace session. How many cases that would eliminate I do not know. At present the combined list (made unique by removal of duplicates) contains 222 words. I have difficulty believing they are all true future deponents.

 

For the curious who have been reading along here is a screenshot of one of the 4 workspaces that get the initial data, and the Combined WS that gets the common ones appearing in the GNT28-T :

 

post-32023-0-92694100-1418966052_thumb.jpg

 

post-32023-0-71982100-1418966070_thumb.jpg

 

If I get my plot working to cross connect things I'll post again.

 

thx

D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Daniel –

 

For what it's worth, I did a few searches. First, for all NT verbs that are in future middle/deponent – there were 88 of them. I took that list and and searched for the verbs among those that also had future actives. That reduced the list by 10 verbs. Finally, I searched those to find the ones that had present actives. There were 23 of those. Whether there is such a thing as a deponent or not (don't want to get into that debate), and recognizing that some of these are special cases (ἄρχω), you're left with 23 verbs that have middle but no active forms in the future, but do have active forms in the present. That list is small enough that the words can be examined in lexicons.

 

Here they are:

 

ἀναβαίνω

ἀποθνῄσκω

ἀπολαμβάνω

ἄρχω

γινώσκω

διαγινώσκω

διατάσσω

ἐμπίπτω

ἐπιγινώσκω

ἐσθίω

καταβαίνω

κατεσθίω

λαμβάνω

μεταβαίνω

ὁράω

παραλαμβάνω

παρασκευάζω

παρέχω

πίνω

πίπτω

τίκτω

φαίνω

φεύγω

EDIT: There is a problem with that list. It doesn't include the verbs whose lexical forms are active even if the present active does not occur in the NT. Here's a modified, more inclusive list, 46 in all:

αἱρέω

ἀναβαίνω

ἀνέχω

ἀντέχω

ἀποβαίνω

ἀποθνῄσκω

ἀποκόπτω

ἀπολαμβάνω

ἄρχω

ἀφίστημι

βουλεύω

γινώσκω

διαγινώσκω

διατάσσω

διατίθημι

εἰσακούω

ἐκδίδωμι

ἐκφεύγω

ἐμπίπτω

ἐνίστημι

ἐντέλλω

ἐξομολογέω

ἐπανίστημι

ἐπιγινώσκω

ἐσθίω

καταβαίνω

κατεσθίω

κομίζω

κόπτω

λαμβάνω

μεταβαίνω

μετακαλέω

ξυράω

ὁράω

παραλαμβάνω

παρασκευάζω

παρέχω

παύω

περιβάλλω

περιζώννυμι

πίνω

πίπτω

συλλαμβάνω

τίκτω

φαίνω

φεύγω

Wow, Julie! Thanks for the work & post!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...