This paper deals with the aorist voice system in NT Greek and focuses on middle-passive markers, namely middle inflection, e.g. in the middle sigmatic aorist, and affixes -η-/-θη-, in the so-called passive aorist. The research is corpus-based and investigates the occurrences of ca. 1800 verbal items. According to the grammarians, in the NT both middle and passive aorists spread. The present study confirms this observation by providing a comprehensive account of the distribution of these forms, but also shows how they have functionally reorganised. Passive aorists spread at the expense of middle aorists in all kinds of intransitive constructions, namely passive, unaccusative, and reflexive, whereas middle aorists are either found in transitive middles, e.g. possessive, benefactive etc., or occur as deponent verbs in both transitive and intransitive clauses. The parameter transitive vs intransitive appears to be relevant for this functional reorganisation.

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This paper deals with the complex interaction between form and function in the verb morphosyntax of four Indo-European languages (French, Italian, Ancient Greek and Sanskrit). Beyond the difference in form, auxiliation patterns in French and Italian, and verb inflections in Ancient Greek and Sanskrit correlate, thanks to the agreement for number and person, to the expression of the relationship with the Subject. The different auxiliation patterns (sum and habeo) and the different inflections (middle and active) correlate to different properties of the Subject. In particular, these forms depend on the syntactic opposition between middle and non-middle. The ways of this dependency are regulated and systematic, although they appear fuzzy and chaotic, not only if the four languages are compared to each other, but also if different morphosyntactic combinations, inside the same language, are concerned.

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Cette étude porte sur la relation entre l’opposition des diathèses, d’une part, et leurs manifestations morphologiques au niveau de la voix en grec ancien, d’autre part. C’est en particulier l’opposition des flexions (active vs moyenne) qui caractérise les trois systèmes temporels-aspectuels du présent, de l’aoriste et du futur que nous envisageons ici. Malgré les ressemblances formelles, les valeurs des flexions ne sont pas identiques partout, du fait que leurs rapports peuvent varier aux niveaux combinatoire et oppositif. Notamment, l’opposition des flexions est neutralisée dans les formes verbales affixées de l’aoriste et du futur, où, en combinaison avec les affixes - η -/- θη -, la flexion est active à l’aoriste et moyenne au futur. Cet article donne une description ordonnée de cette différence qui n’est pas due au hasard et qui se montre, en revanche, cohérente avec d’autres différences entre les deux systèmes.