The passive voice in ancient Indo-European languages: inflection, derivation, periphrastic verb forms

Abstract

The IE languages developed different strategies for the encoding of the passive function. In some language branches, the middle voice extended to the passive function to varying extents. In addition, dedicated derivational formations arose in a number of languages, such as the Greek -ē-/-thē- aorist and the Indo-Aryan -ya-presents. Periphrastic formations involving a verbal adjective or a participle are also widely attested, and played an important role in the building of the passive paradigm in e.g. Romance and Germanic languages. As the periphrastic passive is also attested in Hittite alongside passive use of the middle, both strategies seem to be equally ancient. Some minor strategies include lexical passives and the extensive lability of verbs. A survey of possible strategies provides evidence for the rise of a disparate number of morphemes and constructions, and for their ongoing incorporation into the inflectional paradigms (paradigmaticization) of given languages, thus adding to our knowledge about cross-linguistic sources of passive morphology and grammaticalization processes involved.

Support‐Verb Constructions with Objects:Greek‐CopticInterference in the Documentary Papyri?1

“…Conversely, Greek has an intact and productive middle voice (Inglese et al. 2021). Furthermore, verbs can be labile, that is, there can be ‘morphologically unmarked transitivity alternations’ (Gianollo 2014: 946 with further references), for example, σιωπάω siōpaō ‘to be silent/not to reveal’ (Lavidas 2009: 68–69).…”