Grammatical Voices
Grammatical voices refer to the relationship between the subject, verb, and object in a sentence. The three main voices are active, passive, and middle. In active voice, the subject performs the action, while in passive voice, the subject receives the action. Middle voice indicates that the subject is both the doer and the receiver of the action.
4 Key excerpts on "Grammatical Voices"
eBook - ePubVoice and Mood (Essentials of Biblical Greek Grammar)
A Linguistic Approach
- Mathewson, David L., Porter, Stanley E.(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Baker Academic(Publisher)
...To illustrate the typical treatment of voice in Greek grammatical discussion, we will consider and summarize only a selection of the most recent grammars. Stanley E. Porter, in his Idioms of the Greek New Testament, defines voice as “a form-based semantic category used to describe the role that the grammatical subject of a clause plays in relation to an action.” 3 Despite his rather informed treatment of Greek voice covering eleven pages, Porter admits that there is much more work to be done on voice in New Testament Greek. In his treatment of the specific voices, Porter states that for the active voice “the agent. .. is the grammatical subject of the verb.” 4 In relationship to the other voices, it is the least semantically weighty. He discusses the active voice in relation to its use with verbs of perception, its use with verbs of motion, and its usage with the accusative case functioning adverbially. For the passive voice, the grammatical subject is the object or recipient of the verbal process, placing attention on the grammatical subject as the recipient of the action. Porter discusses the passive voice in relation to specified and unspecified agency, and the role of the accusative case objects. Finally, the middle voice, rather than carrying a reflexive meaning, expresses more direct participation, specific involvement, or some form of benefit of the grammatical subject. 5 The middle is the most semantically weighty of the three voices. Rather than relying on the typical labels used by other grammars (see below), Porter discusses translating the middle voice, important usages in the New Testament, and the issue of deponency. On deponency, Porter is ambiguous about its value and concludes that the interpreter might be justified in finding middle meaning in all deponent verbs. 6 Richard A...
eBook - ePubIntermediate Greek Grammar
Syntax for Students of the New Testament
- Mathewson, David L., Emig, Elodie Ballantine(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Baker Academic(Publisher)
...7 T HE V ERB : V OICE, P ERSON, AND N UMBER Voice 7.1. The voice system in NT Greek indicates the author’s perspective on the relationship of a grammatical subject to the process expressed by the verb. 1 That is, voice indicates the role the subject of a clause plays with respect to the verb’s action. Like other elements of the Greek verb (tense, mood, person, and number), voice is indicated by the inflectional endings. Koine Greek offers a choice of two or three sets of endings to designate three voices: active, passive, and middle (sometimes the same set of endings does double-duty for the passive and middle). The grammatical subject, usually indicated by a nominal form in the nominative case, 2 can be the agent of the action in the verb (i.e., the active voice), the recipient or patient of the action in the verb (i.e., the passive voice), or in some way directly involved in or participating in the action of the verb (i.e., the middle voice). 3 The passive and middle voices place particular focus on the subject, whereas the active voice does not. Many verbs offer the choice of all three voices, but some verbs do not (so-called deponent verbs; see below). Analyzing the voice of Greek verbs is often significant for interpretation. In discussing voice, we find it useful to distinguish the grammatical function from the semantic function of substantives or nominals related to the verb. Many verbs, called transitive, take a grammatical subject and an object; some, called intransitive, take only a subject. The subject is usually a substantive in the nominative case, and the object is usually a substantive in the accusative case (see chap. 1, on cases). Subject and object are grammatical categories indicated by the case endings of substantives. However, subjects and objects can also be considered from the standpoint of their semantic function. The agent is the producer or initiator of the action of the verb, while the patient or goal is the recipient of the action...
eBook - ePub- Maggie Tallerman(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...7 Processes that change grammatical relations Chapter 6 examined the two major systems used in languages to distinguish grammatical relations, the nominative/accusative system and the ergative/absolutive system. It also examined the ways in which the grammatical relations may be represented cross-linguistically: constituent order, case marking and verb agreement. This chapter shows that grammatical relations between a verb and its arguments are not static: most languages have ways of changing the valency of a verb – what arguments it has – via processes of promotion and demotion of NPs. Section 7.1 examines the best known of these valency-changing processes – the passive construction. Section 7.2 looks at a process oft en found in ergative systems, known as the antipassive. Sections 7.3 and 7.4 introduce two other valency-changing processes, the applicative and the causative constructions. 7.1 PASSIVES AND IMPERSONALS 7.1.1 The passive construction and transitive verbs Consider the pairs of sentences in (1) through (3): In each example, the (a) sentences are said to be ACTIVE and the (b) sentences PASSIVE (in traditional grammars, this is sometimes known as ‘passive voice’, as opposed to ‘active voice’, but we will not be using these terms here). Before reading further, examine each pair of sentences in (1) to (3), and list as many syntactic and morphosyntactic differences as you can between the active sentences and the passive sentences. Use the correct grammatical terminology to the best of your ability. The active (a) sentences all have a transitive verb – a verb that has a subject and a direct object. By contrast, the passive (b) sentences all have only a subject, and no object: they have become intransitive. This is an example of valency-changing: here, a verb that had two core arguments now has only one...
eBook - ePubAn Introduction to Biblical Greek Grammar
Elementary Syntax and Linguistics
- Dana M. Harris(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Zondervan Academic(Publisher)
...In chapter 11, we will learn the forms of the passive voice. We will see that Greek uses the same form for the present middle as it does for the present passive. Later we will see that this is also true for the perfect middle and perfect passive. Greek can recycle these forms because the context will make clear whether the verb is middle or passive voice. Don’t worry about this now—this is just a head’s up so that you won’t be surprised later. REVIEW OF CHAPTER 3 In this chapter we learned how to build a Greek verb. We saw that the present active and middle indicatives are built by taking the present stem and adding primary active or middle endings. A connecting vowel is used to connect these two morphological components. It may be helpful to memorize the primary active and middle endings, although as we have seen, some of these endings change a bit when they are added to the present stem and connecting vowel. For this reason, it is more helpful to memorize the present active and middle indicative paradigms, because these paradigms reflect the forms that you will see in the GNT. We also discussed some of the more common functions of the middle voice and noted that some verbs have different meanings in the active and middle voices. We also saw that some verbs do not have any active forms, such as ἔρχομαι. Finally, we introduced the concept of lexical form, which is the form that a Greek word (in this case, Greek verbs) is listed in a lexicon. Since most words in the GNT do not occur in this lexical form, you need to be able to identify the morphological components used to construct the actual form that you are looking at, so that you can determine the lexical form. This process is called parsing. Study Guide for Chapter 3 1. Be able to identify each of the following components for verb forms: present stem lexical form connecting vowel inflected meaning primary active personal endings primary middle personal endings 2...
