222 KB41 KB199920252020Horrocks, Geoffrey C.številka:2letnik:22str. 7-23ISSN:1580-0261COBISSID_HOST:58003715URN:URN:NBN:SI:doc-VZDWOPMPenZnanstvena založba Filozofske fakulteteKeria (Ljubljana)active voiceaktivAncient Greekdeponent verbdeponentnikimedijmiddle voicepasivpassive voicepomenska specializacijasemantic specialisationstara grščinaWhat's in the middle? Two voices or three in Anicent Greek?|It has long been taken for granted in reference works, grammars and elementary introductions that Ancient Greek had three grammatical voices, active, passive and middle. Yet scholars have always had great difficulty in characterising the middle voice in a straightforward and convincing way, and language learners are often perplexed to find that most of the middles they find in texts fail to exemplify the function, usually involving some notion of self interest, that is typically ascribed to this voice. This article therefore re-examines the Ancient Greek middle, both through the lens of a general survey of "middle voice" functions across languages, and through the analysis of all the medio-passive verb forms attested in Book 1 of Plato's Republic. The principal observations are that Ancient Greek middles do not represent a regular pattern of usage either from a typological point of view or as employed specifically in Republic 1 (the database is in fact partly extended to other works). Accordingly, the main conclusion is that the Ancient Greek middle is not a grammatical voice sensu stricto, i.e. a regular syntactic alternation applying to all verbs with a given set of properties and expressed by a regular morphological form with a predictable semantic function. Rather, it appears to be a convenient collective name for a large set of "autonomous" verb forms that are either clearly deponent (i.e., have no active counterparts) or that have been lexicalised in a specialised meaning vis-a-vis their supposed active counterparts (i.e., are also deponents in practice, despite appearances). In all probability, therefore, medio-passive morphology, whatever it once represented in terms of function, was recharacterised prehistorically as "passive" morphology, leaving a residue of verbs exhibiting forms with non-passive functions. Presumably, these survived as "middles" only because they had no active counterparts or had been assigned innovative meanings that distinguished them from any formally related activesReferenčna dela, slovnice in najelementarnejši jezikovni uvodi po tradiciji kot samo po sebi umevno jemljejo dejstvo, da je imela stara grščina tri načine, aktiv, pasiv in medij (ali "srednjik"). A filologi se vsakič znova znajdejo v hudi zadregi, ko je treba medij jasno in prepričljivo opredeliti, medtem ko študentje stare grščine pogosto presenečeni opazijo, da večina oblik medija v izvirnih besedilih ne ustreza vlogi, ki se mu običajno pripisuje in za katero naj bi bila značilna določena mera subjektovega osebnega interesa. Pričujoči prispevek torej na novo odpira vprašanje starogrškega medija, in sicer z vidika tipološkega pregleda "medijalnih" funkcij, vključuje pa tudi analizo mediopasnih glagolskih oblik, izpričanih v 1. knjigi Platonove Države. Poglavitne ugotovitve kažejo, da niti v tipološkem smislu niti z vidika 1. knjige Platonove Države (korpus je v resnici nekoliko širši in vsebuje tudi odlomke drugih del) raba medija ne sledi jasnemu vzorcu. Iz tega izhaja najpomembnejši zaključek prispevka, da namreč starogrški medij ni glagolski način v pravem pomenu besede in da torej ne moremo govoriti o pravilni skladenjski tvorbi, ki bi se uporabljala v primeru vseh glagolskih oblik z določenimi lastnostmi in se izražala s pravilnimi oblikoslovnimi sredstvi s predvidljivo semantično funkcijo. Nasprotno, izkaže se, da gre za prikladno kolektivno ime za veliko skupino "avtonomnih" glagolskih oblik, ki so bodisi očitno deponentne (t.j. nimajo aktivnih ustreznic) ali pa so bile, v nasprotju s hipotetičnimi aktivnimi ustreznicami, leksikalizirane za izražanje specializiranih pomenov. Po vsej verjetnosti se je torej mediopasivno oblikoslovje, četudi je morda nekoč predstavljalo posebno funkcijo, v predzgodovinski dobi reinterpretiralo kot "pasivno", pri čemer so se kot okameneli ostanki ohranile glagolske oblike z nepasivnimi funkcijami. Domnevati smemo, da se so slednje ohranile kot "medijalne" zgolj zato, ker niso imele aktivnih vzporednic ali ker so pridobile drugotne pomene, po katerih so se razlikovale od aktivnih, v formalnem pogledu z njimi povezanih oblikTEXTznanstveno časopisjejournalsSlovenian National E-content AggregatorNational and University Library of SloveniaUniverza v Ljubljani, Filozofska fakulteta, Znanstvena založba