21st Century Classical Greek -- voice continued

So I’m working on objective definitions of voice such as executive (deliberate action) and passive (defined for now by a structure with specific uses), and I just showed that middle and middle-passive conjugation endings are nearly indistinguishable within each flavor column of our aspectual table.

Aspect             Eventive                                  Conceptual

Imperfective    μην/ο/το/μεθα/σθε/ντο            μαι/ει/ται/μεθα/σθε/νται

Progressive      μην/ου/το/μεθα/σθε/ντο          μαι/ει/ται/μεθα/σθε/νται

Perfective        μην/σο/το/μεθα/σθε/ντο          μαι/σαι/ται/μεθα/σθε/νται

Impersonal gerundives have the following endings:

1)         -ein is the progressive conceptual i.g in executive voice; -sthai otherwise. There is no progressive eventive i.g..

2)         -sai is the imperfective eventive in executive voice; -sthai otherwise.

3)         ­-ein is the imperfective conceptual for executive voice; -sthai otherwise.

4)         -nai is the ending for the perfective conceptual executive voice, and – you guessed it -- -sthai otherwise. There is no perfective eventive i.g.

Personal gerundives break out as follows:

1)         -antes, -ontes, and -untes are the endings in executive voice.

2)         -entes is the ending in passive voice.

3)         Otherwise personal gerundives take -men- between the root and the personal ending.

Now let me show that -men- cannot mark reflexive morphology. In our first subsection we have:

Θουκυδίδης Ἀθηναῖος ξυνέγραψε τὸν πόλεμον τῶν Πελοποννησίων καὶ Ἀθηναίων, ὡς ἐπολέμησαν πρὸς ἀλλήλους, ἀρξάμενος εὐθὺς καθισταμένου καὶ ἐλπίσας μέγαν τε ἔσεσθαι καὶ ἀξιολογώτατον τῶν προγεγενημένων, τεκμαιρόμενος ὅτι ἀκμάζοντές τε ᾖσαν ἐς αὐτὸν ἀμφότεροι παρασκευῇ τῇ πάσῃ καὶ τὸ ἄλλο Ἑλληνικὸν ὁρῶν ξυνιστάμενον πρὸς ἑκατέρους, τὸ μὲν εὐθύς, τὸ δὲ καὶ διανοούμενον.

None of these personal gerundives is reflexive. Each of them points at an action that was neither deliberate nor intransitive.

So look at arksamenos. Because it’s imperfective, it gets a label of “middle voice” in the Perseus Word Tool, and the old grammars tell you that middle voice is reflexive. What is reflexive about Thucydides starting to write? Nothing. What nuance was he trying to give his audience when he used this form?

Well, he deliberately did the actual writing intending to produce a written work (ksunegrapse), but he did not begin for the purpose of making a beginning, it’s just that there would be no writing at all if he hadn’t made a beginning, and so he did not use executive voice. By using a personal gerundive, he references the start or describes himself as starting; maybe he made some notes or wrote in a journal “They’re fighting again in Achaia province”, assuming that it was just another border war. He deliberately turned it into a serious history when he could tell it had gone beyond that.

Next week I’ll discuss the other reason why it’s base voice.

DIY -- dutch oven bread

So my baking element shorted out one Friday when I was roasting a chicken. I finished it on the stove so that was no loss.

But there's no sense in buying a new range yet because I gotta gut my kitchen anyway.

So I did the next best thing: I got a dutch oven and dug up recipes for using it on a stovetop as a substitute for baking.

The recipe I used was posted by some people who live on a boat. Boats do not have a lot of space, and the place where you would normally put an oven, you actually want for storage. But since you have a gas or electric cooktop, you can make bread and cake in a dutch oven.

Size is the first problem. The dutch oven I got is 6 quart and just barely held a half batch of my French bread recipe. I am seriously considering getting a deeper one for "baking" and using the one I have for chili and things.

The second thing is you can't expect the bread to get brown. Using a dutch oven basically cooks with steam. This is normal and natural for sourdough breads, but your other breads will not brown on top.

The third issue is whether the lid of your dutch oven has blisters on it to drip fluids back into your recipe, especially to baste "roasts". If so, when you "bake" in it, you need to put a layer of parchment paper or foil between the lid and the pot so the liquid doesn't drip into your cake or bread.

Fourth, you have to insulate the bottom of what you're making from the bottom of the pot. Most people tell you, get a tuna can and put it open side up under what you're baking. The fact is, you have to layer things. First the pot. Then the can or a sturdy pottery dish. Then a "pan" of three layers of aluminum foil or, if your "oven" is big enough, a small pizza pan. Then a layer of oatmeal to absorb moisture on the bottom of the dough. Then the dough. If you're going with a tuna can, use the 6 ounce size, not the big one you use for a family size batch of tuna casserole.

And you shouldn't put the pot directly on the burner. You need a thick pizza pan or cookie sheet directly on the burner, to protect the bottom of the dutch oven.

The real advantage of a dutch oven is if SHTF. If you ever saw Lonesome Dove, you may remember the scene where the cowboy goes out and hauls a bunch of sandwich loaves out of a pot on an open fire. That was dutch oven bread. (Of course, it was probably sourdough due to the history of packaged domestic yeast, but they didn't show you the starter tub or the time it takes to build your dough.) 

I got a Staub cast iron dutch oven. There are other brands. I recommend that you don't go cheap. Remember, I also told you to buy some good stainless steel utensils like Revereware, despite the expense, instead of these non-stick things that never last long or turn out to produce poisons. Same with a dutch oven. Spend the extra bucks to get something good.

Oh, by the way. Do yourself a favor and follow the instructions in the pamphlet. Always let your dutch oven go cold before washing it.

21st Century Classical Greek -- voice

So I’ve promised to explain everything about gerundives once I explain everything about voice, and here it is.

“Voice” (technical term diathesis) is the label attached to one of several vectors in understanding Greek verbs. There’s 

“mood” (21^st century term “modality”);

aspect (old label “tense”);

and definiteness, the feature that drives use of gerundives instead of conjugated verbs.

The old grammars claim there are four voices: active; passive; middle; and middle-passive.

They are ill-defined; Charles Conrad says so. I mean, if “active” means relating to an action, show me a verb that isn’t related to an action. Even gerundives display action, although from a less definite, more “descriptive”, perspective than a conjugated verb.

In fact, “active” verbs all connote actions deliberately undertaken for the sake of some end result. In imperfective eventive, there is no implication that the result came about or persisted, but very few people voluntarily do something without some concept, however hazy, of having something come of it. That’s “active” voice. I have labeled this “executive voice” to make a distinction from the old way of defining things.

Passive verbs require a structure with a grammatical subject that is the logical object of the verb. Passives provide a strictly intransitive structure, which I will demonstrate later is one of three types of transitivity in Greek. As intransitives, they tend to be descriptive.

The passive uses the “subject” as an object of a single verb; the anti-passive uses the object of one verb as the subject of a different verb. That’s why I’m retaining the word “passive” as a label, although its strict meaning relates to the sufferer (“patient”) of an action.

The other two voices are mis-defined. The grammars tell you that middle voice is reflexive. But that’s not true; context is king, and without specific wording in the context, verbs in middle voice are not reflexive. I’ll give you examples in later posts of reflexive structures that use executive voice.

Conrad defines middle-passive as an action that happens spontaneously or under external influence, even force. In other words, everything that isn’t executive or passive.

Middle voice is also used where we don’t have a strictly intransitive structure, but we don’t have deliberate action.

Why did the old grammars think “middle voice” was different from the other voice? Because every verb conjugated in middle voice has the sigma marker of the imperfective. Again, the old grammars interpreted morphology as meaning.

Why did the “everything else” morphology in progressive or perfective get labeled “middle-passive”?

Well, for one thing the “everything else” morphology uses almost the same conjugational endings regardless of aspect. Where they split is on flavors (which will be important later when I change a conjugational paradigm).

Aspect             Eventive                                  Conceptual

Imperfective    μην/ο/το/μεθα/σθε/ντο            μαι/ει/ται/μεθα/σθε/νται

Progressive      μην/ου/το/μεθα/σθε/ντο          μαι/ει/ται/μεθα/σθε/νται

Perfective        μην/σο/το/μεθα/σθε/ντο          μαι/σαι/ται/μεθα/σθε/νται

The gerundives go further. Impersonal gerundives have the following endings:

1)         -ein is the progressive conceptual i.g in executive voice; -sthai otherwise. There is no progressive eventive i.g.. morphology.

2)         -sai is the imperfective eventive in executive voice; -sthai otherwise.

3)         ­-ein is the imperfective conceptual for executive voice; -sthai otherwise.

4)         -nai is the ending for the perfective conceptual executive voice. Guess what the other voice ending is?

Personal gerundives break out by voice as follows:

1)         -antes, -ontes, and -untes are the endings in executive voice.

2)         -entes is the ending in passive voice.

3)         Otherwise personal gerundives take -men- between the root and the personal ending.

Because they are the “everything else” voice, I label middle and middle-passive base voice throughout these posts. I’m going to do one more post on voice before I show another reason why bundling them together is not a problem.

21st Century Classical Greek -- the anti-passive

So here we are back with the text of our first subsection, and I have bolded the material for this post. And I said I was going to tell you why the grammars are wrong to say that the subject of an “infinitive” is in the accusative.

Θουκυδίδης Ἀθηναῖος ξυνέγραψε τὸν πόλεμον τῶν Πελοποννησίων καὶ Ἀθηναίων, ὡς ἐπολέμησαν πρὸς ἀλλήλους, ἀρξάμενος εὐθὺς καθισταμένου καὶ ἐλπίσας μέγαν τε ἔσεσθαι καὶ ἀξιολογώτατον τῶν προγεγενημένων, τεκμαιρόμενος ὅτι ἀκμάζοντές τε ᾖσαν ἐς αὐτὸν ἀμφότεροι παρασκευῇ τῇ πάσῃ καὶ τὸ ἄλλο Ἑλληνικὸν ὁρῶν ξυνιστάμενον πρὸς ἑκατέρους, τὸ μὲν εὐθύς, τὸ δὲ καὶ διανοούμενον.

What we have here is a structure known in the 21^st century to exist in a number of languages, the anti-passive.

The anti-passive is a useful structure in languages with a lot of cases. It simplifies sentences. It allows the object of one verb (or verbal derivative like elpisas) to be the subject of another verb,  without changing case or explicitly telling the audience that the grammatical object is the same physical object as the other verb takes for its subject.

We have them in English, even though our case structure is so simple: “he set the pot to boiling”.

Notice that the end of that phrase uses an -ing word, normally considered a gerund, in a phrase that looks like an infinitive.  That makes it more comfortable for English speakers that I call esesthai a gerundive, but it does nothing for speakers of other languages and that’s why I didn’t list it among the features of the impersonal gerundive in last week’s post.

Impersonal gerundives don’t take person/number/gender endings; they are more limited: -ein, -sai, -nai and -sthai. 

Impersonal gerundives have a number of uses, including replacing conjugated verbs. In the case of the anti-passive here, esesthai refers to something that hadn’t happened but which Thucydides expected to happen based on other information.

Like personal gerundives, impersonal gerundives can represent substantives, but the type of substantive is limited by aspect to event, habit or situation, and result (imperfective, progressive, perfective, respectively).

In a later post I will give you more evidence that the subject of an infinitive is not necessarily in the accusative.

What ending an i.g. has depends on its voice, and now I can give you a 21^st century definition of voice.

21sr Century Classical Greek -- impersonal gerundives

 So here we are back with the text of our first subsection, and I have bolded the material for this post.

Θουκυδίδης Ἀθηναῖος ξυνέγραψε τὸν πόλεμον τῶν Πελοποννησίων καὶ Ἀθηναίων, ὡς ἐπολέμησαν πρὸς ἀλλήλους, ἀρξάμενος εὐθὺς καθισταμένου καὶ ἐλπίσας μέγαν τε ἔσεσθαι καὶ ἀξιολογώτατον τῶν προγεγενημένων, τεκμαιρόμενος ὅτι ἀκμάζοντές τε ᾖσαν ἐς αὐτὸν ἀμφότεροι παρασκευῇ τῇ πάσῃ καὶ τὸ ἄλλο Ἑλληνικὸν ὁρῶν ξυνιστάμενον πρὸς ἑκατέρους, τὸ μὲν εὐθύς, τὸ δὲ καὶ διανοούμενον.

If you really did memorize eimi, you know what esesthai is.

It lets me bust a couple of grammatical points and bring up one that none of the grammars talk about.

First, what does “future infinitive” mean? Seriously. An infinitive, by definition, has no time. How can it possibly be “future”?

Well, it isn’t. It’s labeled future strictly because of that -sigma- before the ending, along with the absence of augment.

In aspectual terms, it’s an imperfective conceptual. That destroys the cognitive dissonance of labeling something with no time as belonging to a tense, when tenses are all about time. So that’s an advantage we get from changing to aspectual labels. No matter what the aspect, calling something an infinitive would not create cognitive dissonance.

I’m also going to change the label away from “infinitive” to get rid of the idea that verb morphology incorporates timing. I’m going to label it a gerundive because of three things.

1.         It’s a verbal derivative, like the gerundive with personal endings.

2.         It can be a substantive like the gerundive with personal endings.

3.         It can take the place of a conjugated verb in some situations, like the gerundive with personal endings.

Although this new gerundive takes more than one form, it doesn’t decline like an adjective. Since it doesn’t take person/number endings, I’m going to call it an impersonal gerundive.

All imperfective conceptuals are for things that haven’t happened yet to those involved in the context about which Thucydides is writing. Esesthai refers to the non-existence of – something – at the time Thucydides decided to start his writing program.

Part of what went into his decision to write was this elpisas megan te esesthai.

Next point: all the grammars will tell you that the subject of an infinitive is always in the accusative. That’s not what is happening here and I will tell you why next week.

21st Century Classical Greek -- causative and absolute

We’re working over the first subsection of Thucydides to a fair-thee-well because there’s lots of grammar in it and in particular, because it lets me destroy stuff in the old grammars. The old grammarians were hypnotized by verb morphology and virtually ignored context, and they came up with some really weird concepts as a result.

The gerundive kathistamenou in this subsection lets me pound on two of them.

Θουκυδίδης Ἀθηναῖος ξυνέγραψε τὸν πόλεμον τῶν Πελοποννησίων καὶ Ἀθηναίων, ὡς ἐπολέμησαν πρὸς ἀλλήλους, ἀρξάμενος εὐθὺς καθισταμένου καὶ ἐλπίσας μέγαν τε ἔσεσθαι καὶ ἀξιολογώτατον τῶν προγεγενημένων, τεκμαιρόμενος ὅτι ἀκμάζοντές τε ᾖσαν ἐς αὐτὸν ἀμφότεροι παρασκευῇ τῇ πάσῃ καὶ τὸ ἄλλο Ἑλληνικὸν ὁρῶν ξυνιστάμενον πρὸς ἑκατέρους, τὸ μὲν εὐθύς, τὸ δὲ καὶ διανοούμενον.

When you are in Perseus, and you click on this word, the word tool tells you it is causative.

What is being caused by the wars being a settled thing?

Nothing.

Unless you count the point when Thucydides decided to start writing.

Which is arksamenos, with “Thucydides” for its antecedent. What’s the antecedent of kathistamenou?

There isn’t one.  There’s no substantive in “genitive” singular for kathistamenou to hang from.

But if you click on euthus, the Word Tool will tell you that with a genitive gerundive, it means just as that action happens.

Now look at the LSJ entry for kathistimi.  Is “bring down” causative? No, it’s simply transitive. Is “set up” causative? It’s transitive. What about “make”, “reckon”, “get”? Nope.

Causative means to cause the execution of some action, not to execute it. The contexts cited in LSJ are not long enough to support the notion of causality. If we get to something that the word tool marks as causative, and I think the context supports that nuance, I’ll let you know.

So even if you were trying to think of kathistamenou as a genitive absolute, this dictionary entry shows you that the timing is in euthus, not in the gerundive, all the more so as the gerundive is a progressive conceptual, not a progressive eventive.

Every single grammarian of Greek has a different definition for “genitive absolute”, and one of them (Gildersleeve) copies from his own Latin grammar.  What’s more, the most comprehensible definition is in Allen and Greenough’s Latin grammar, but the Greek grammars of Smyth, Farrar, and Gildersleeve don’t agree with A&G or with each other. That’s a “fuzzy” definition. There is no objective proof that something exists unless everybody agrees on the definition of what that something is.

The next time I refer to the absolute, I will give you more information on why the absolute doesn’t exist.

Experiment with Wordpress is over

 I asked people reading this blog to try the new Wordpress interface and some of you did.

The interface is nice, I even found out after some experimenting how to clean it up by getting rid of irrelevant graphics.

But if you want to use Wordpress for a blog, either start there or convert over before you have put up more than 100 posts.

Because the Wordpress import app doesn't work the way you want.

You can import all your posts to have Wordpress addressees. Your images will follow.

But if you split your posts onto pages like I did, so your readers could bookmark just the pages for later reference, Wordpress can't help you.

Your index pages will get Wordpress addresses.

The posts that they link to will still have addresses on your old site.

You will have to re-create every link on those pages to point to the Wordpress address of the post.

With nearly 1200 posts, I wasn't willing to go through that pain. I brought it to the attention of Wordpress support;  They probably won't do anything about it, unless they put it in their highest-priced site option.

So it was worth the experiment but Wordpress isn't the place to put a long-term blog that you move from a previous host.