Aorist voice patterns in the diachrony of Greek

Abstract

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.

Voice Markers in Septuagint Greek in the Light of Hebrew Interference: A Corpus‐Based Study on the Aorist System of the Book of Genesis*

“…This is indicative of some degree of functional overlap between these two categories. The hypothesis that the passive aorist gradually replaced the middle is also supported by data from the Gospels discussed in Tronci (2018: 259–260). Comparable remarks apply to the verb πορεύομαι [ poreúomai ], which occurs in the Septuagint as a middle form in the present stem (e.g.…”

“…This is an innovation with respect to Classical Greek, where reflexive structures were usually marked by middle aorists (cf. Tronci 2018 for further details).

Another innovation with respect to earlier stages of Greek is the occurrence of passive aorists in intransitive constructions with an agent as a unique argument. This is the case with the verbs ἀποκρίνω [ apokrínō ] ‘answer’, πορεύω [ poreúō ] ‘walk’ and συναναστρέφω [ synanastréphō ] ‘wrestle with’ in the following examples:

…”

“…They are interesting for our research, however, as they represent residual forms of an older stage of the language in which the voice system of the aorist was presumably similar to the binary system of the present (cf. Benedetti 2017; Tronci 2018 for further details). This unproductive binary system of voice coexisted together with the productive ternary system, although exhibited by a restricted number of lexical items.…”

“…The expansion into the functional area of middle aorists did not concern the middle aorists that occurred in biargumental structures (cf. Tronci 2018; Bruno & Tronci 2019).…”

The Atticist lexica as metalinguistic resource for morphosyntactic change in Post-Classical Greek

“…Note that Moeris also keenly observes that Classical Greek itself already displayed variation in certain instances (see example 17 "second attic").37 Similarly, he signals the later morphological variant of ῥήσσουσιν from Post-Classical Greek (example 19). Furthermore, the Atticists warn against using the -θη aorists which from early Post-Classical onwards starting ousting the middle aorists from the more complex aorist voice system known to us from Classical Greek (Browning 1983: 30;Horrocks 2010: 103;Tronci 2018). As the following testimonies indicate the -θη aorist should not be used by Atticistic writers instead of the older middle/passive aorists even though the -θη aorists replace them in Post-Classical Greek.…”