Talk:Deponent verb

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deponents
I can think of verbs that are used far more commonly in their passive forms. You hear about being accustomed often, but how often do you hear about accustoming? Not very. If you try to make "I am pooped" active, you change its meaning; the same thing with "I am pissed", although you can say, "that pisses me off". LOL! Personally, I don't use "This tires me" at all, but very often I say, "I'm tired and I need to go to bed". You can say, "I am used to it", but not, "he uses me to it". English does some funny stuff with the passive voice, and no one has noticed. Also, we make up funny adjectives like "four-legged", which derives from an unused verb meaning to attach four legs to, lol; compare that with the Latin "togatus", toga-clad. --jasonc65
 * I think "tired and pooped" are past-participle adjectives. "Used to" seems to be a defective verb in that sense(?), only used in the past tense and as a past participle adjective. About -legged, -fabled etc, I think you are wrong in thinking there *must* be a verb, and that the adjective could be derived directly from a noun. (Gee, such bad explanation, I am such an amateur on this.)惑乱 分からん 13:55, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Nugor. Sed pauca verba certe videtur deponentia, nonne consentis?  There, I just used one.  You're supposed to get used to it.  Oops, there go two more.  Never mind.  Are we agreed?  There we go again.  Participle adjectives.  Defective verbs that cannot be used in the active voice.  Or should we just say, deponents?  They say that looking at a language through the lens of another is dangerous.  It is actually disputed that Greek contains deponents, being that they were really reflexive verbs misunderstood through Latin analogy.  Actually, even Latin deponents are really left-overs from the middle voice.  I do think it amusing to compare some of our verbs with Latin deponents, even if the similarity is misleading.  The way we use passive-looking verbs like "to be tired" and defective verbs like "is supposed to" and idioms like "we are agreed" in ways that are quasi-reflexive, quasi-passive, quasi-middle, is in fact similar to Latin deponents like "irascor", "conor", "opinor", reflexive German verbs like "sich erinnern", the Greek middle voice, and our own indigenous middle voice with verbs like "move", "burn", "stretch", etc. in the senses which are intransitive and involve self-propulsion of some sort.  Also, in French, the passive meaning is often expressed through the reflexive voice.  Reflexive verbs in French, therefore, are deponents.  LOL.  --jasonc65


 * Excuse me? The Latin language, you say, has deponent verbs because they are "left over"???   Let's put our cart behind our pony here, and get this down on the straight and level:  Latin and Greek existed at the same time even though Greek is attested at an earlier date.  Try to get your facts straight in the future, okay?  Dexter Nextnumber (talk) 03:05, 14 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Dexter, Jason has his cart and pony in order, and his facts in the past were just fine, but not clear enough. Latin deponents (though I loathe to use the word deponent) are indeed a leftover from the middle voice - not the Greek middle voice - but the ProtoIndoEuropean one. PIE lacked a proper passive voice, the effects of which are seen in nearly every IndoEuropean daughter family.
 * Try not to be so sarcastic in the future, okay?
 * Btw, who actually spells out okay?
 * --Ioscius ∞ 16:23, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

No Deponency in Greek?
From (the current version of) the article:
 * Verbs which are assumed to be deponent might simply always be used in the middle voice with middle meanings. As an example, the verb ἔρχομαι (to come or go) could be understood to be in the middle voice, as one always brings oneself with when they come or go

I'd be very interested in reading how the scholars who make this claim deal with obviously transitive verb stems that are attested only in middle voice forms, like φαγομαι and οψομαι. --Jonadab the Unsightly One, 2008 July 14. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.166.236.61 (talk) 23:11, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
 * SineBot is annoying, and so are expired sessions. Yes, that was me. --Jonadab
 * Well, for instance phagomai could be understood as "I feed myself", opsomai a little trickier, but compare intueri in Latin. Just because we programmed English speakers understand verbs as active and passive, doesn't mean that there doesn't exist a rationale that we just find hard to pin down. --Ioscius ∞ 16:29, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
 * After reading the above, I have taken the liberty of removing the following snippet of text:

Also, scholars have recently begun to debate whether deponency actually exists in Ancient Greek, or if it has been incorrectly assumed based on its existence in Latin. Verbs which are assumed to be deponent might simply always be used in the middle voice with middle meanings. As an example, the verb ἔρχομαι (to come or go) could be understood to be in the middle voice, as one always brings oneself with when they come or go.
 * Shinobu (talk) 15:02, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
 * We should, though, have some discussion in here of current opinion on the subject, which varies a bit. A reasonable number of recent scholars argue that the traditional analysis is a misapplication of Latin grammatical concepts to Greek, and either propose modified conceptions of what deponency is for Greek, or argue for doing away with it as a category altogether. See, for example: --Delirium (talk) 20:28, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I have been trying to follow the discussion in the Biblical Greek scholarly internet community. Here are some good pointers (Conrad's articles and Rutgar Allan's thesis are especially important). 193.167.107.251 (talk) 14:30, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
 * http://evepheso.wordpress.com/2010/12/13/deponency-the-sbl-panel-discussion-part-i/ (see also http://dare.uva.nl/en/record/108528)
 * http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/GrkVc.html

- It's now 2020 and time to review this. The Cambridge Grammar of Classical Greek (van Emde Boas, Rijksbaron, Huitink, de Bakker 2019) has basically accepted Allan wholesale. EAGLL (Encyclopedia of Ancient Greek Language and Linguistics, published by Brill 2014) covers voice with many articles written by Allan. Basically they accept the word "deponent" but certainly not the definition given in this article. CGCG avoids using it, just mentions it once and talks about "middle-only and passive-only" verbs. EAGLL can be searched online and even though the articles aren't available freely, you can search for "media tantum" and see that middle deponents "are verbs which do not have an active voice". "Media tantum have a middle meaning in that their subject is physically or mentally affected by…".

According to this modern view Ancient Greek has a two voice system: active and middle-passive (mediopassive). The latter expresses that "the subject is somehow affected by the action". The noun which describes this is "subject-affectedness". Conrad (see the link above) explains that the active voice is neutral WRT subject-affectedness, i.e. can be used where the middle-passive can be used, but not vice versa. In linguistics this is called asymmetric markedness.

Because practically all use of middle (and passive) forms can be explained by subject-affectedness - although there are hard cases - the notion about "active meaning" is wrong. How the texts are translated has nothing to do with how the original language must be explained as language. (Therefore this Wikipedia article text "middle/passive in form but active in translation" is doubly wrong.)

Ancient Greek Grammar for the Study of the New Testament (Siebenthal 2019) doesn't reject "active meaning" as clearly but also mentions "subject-affectedness". About transitiveness it says "In connection with the syntax of verbs the distinction between transitive and intransitive verbs or uses is often referred to. This distinction should not be confused with voice distinctions. [...] Any of these types of verbs or uses may in principle occur in the active, middle or passive voice" (p. 296).

Constantine Campbell in Advances in the Study of Greek - New Insights for Reading The New Testament (2015) rejects the notion of deponency. He gives a short history of the issue and further reading. His article is a good starting point. He tells us that basically there's very strong concensus in the field of so called "New Testament Greek" scholarship that the old explanation of deponency is wrong, and even that we should stop using the word deponent with Greek.

If someone needs online resources to understand the issue, Carl W. Conrad's article is good and easy. Rutger Allan's thesis is available online (permalink https://hdl.handle.net/11245/1.198742 ). It's not too difficult to read, but may require some background from linguistics. If the reader doesn't accept using general linguistics, it may be hard to accept this new view on Ancient Greek voice - although Conrad came to basically same conclusions at first without linguistics.

The main problem in old explanations have often been that people who aren't native speakers of Ancient Greek have tried to understand and describe the Greek voice system through their own or some other well known modern language (or Latin!) and its voice distinctions which aren't identical to Greek. 84.248.15.37 (talk) 00:31, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

(Continuing from another machine.) See also https://latin.stackexchange.com/questions/9064/how-accurate-is-the-typical-definition-of-a-deponent-verb and especially the response by Ethan Bierlein. It links to Seumas Macdonald's blog (https://thepatrologist.com/?s=deponency&submit=Search )which is recommended reading. Actually it seems to questions the simplistic explanation ("middle in form, active in meaning") of Latin deponency, too.

In light of these recent discussions it looks to me that some day this whole article must be totally rewritten. 2001:999:10:4D94:F515:8A64:98B0:CD2B (talk) 12:12, 15 January 2020 (UTC) --
 * I am persuaded that "deponent" is a false category in Greek. https://www.dannyzacharias.net/blog/2014/5/16/your-intro-greek-teacher-was-wrong-deponent-verbs-dont-exist (PeacePeace (talk) 23:06, 14 January 2020 (UTC))


 * If so, it should be mentioned in the article, at least, a hint of different analysis existing. --Error (talk) 16:03, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

-- Jonathan Pennington has written several peer reviewed and easy to read articles about deponency in Koine, see https://sbts.academia.edu/JonathanPennington. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:14BA:16E2:9100:FDB4:31CD:3360:27C7 (talk) 19:25, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Another good but more advanced source is Rachel Aubrey (2020): Hellenistic Greek Middle Voice: Semantic event structure and voice typology (her thesis, available at least at https://www.canil.ca/wordpress/student-services/academic-resources/completed-theses/). Her view is more nuanced than Allan's, she says "subject affectedness" is a simple generalization. Anyway she argues for genuine middle semantics instead of deponency. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:14BA:16E2:9100:FDB4:31CD:3360:27C7 (talk) 22:01, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

History?
This article deserves a section on the history or etymology of deponents. Shinobu (talk) 19:49, 17 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes. If they come from some evolution of PIE, it should be explained. --Error (talk) 16:04, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Deponent verbs in Sanskrit?
Most of us learn about deponent verbs when we study Latin, or at least I did. But what about the other languages in the Indo-European family of languages? Does Sanskrit have deponent verbs? Dexter Nextnumber (talk) 03:00, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes. People not knowing such basic facts probably shouldn't make fun of people who know what they are talking about, like you so rudely did above. --Ioscius ∞ 16:30, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Deponent verbs in Etruscan?
Has there been any progress lately in figuring out whether the Etruscan language had deponent verbs? Dexter Nextnumber (talk) 03:05, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Passive meaning for a deponent verb
It is not explained in the article how (if at all) a deponent verb forms a passive meaning. For example, utor, usus sum, uti is a Latin deponent verb which means "to use". So utitur means "he/she/it uses (is using)". How would one say "(it) is used/is being used" in Latin?--87.11.214.203 (talk) 17:00, 4 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, a fairly large number of deponent verbs seem to express intransitive meanings, but for the others that's a good question... AnonMoos (talk) 16:02, 5 July 2010 (UTC)


 * As far as my limited knowledge of Latin goes, most deponent verbs have no passive (except for their gerundive). Instead you would need a different verb, such as the passive of adhibeo in this case.
 * All the best. –Syncategoremata (talk) 21:24, 6 July 2010 (UTC)


 * According to Bennett's, constructions using verbal nouns and esse (e.g. in ūsū esse) have been used to simulate the passive voice of some deponent verbs, while others rely on the passive form of a synonym, as Syncategoremata pointed out earlier. HalfHeartedFanatic (talk) 23:23, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Kjenner
Why are these Norwegian verbs on the list? The fact that their active voice form has a meaning as well seems to deny them deponency as verbs. 65.191.36.167 (talk) 02:32, 12 August 2012 (UTC) REPLACE: en:BLEAKGH (got:ᚷᚲᛇᛚᛒ) 02:33, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

"a book sold copies" is a poor example
I'd imagine it's often an anglism. --83.84.137.22 (talk) 05:53, 25 November 2012 (UTC)


 * It's not a deponent verb as such, but it's a good example of a verb having both "active" and "middle" meanings. In Romance languages, a verb is often converted into pseudo-reflexive form to mark such a shift in meaning: "vendre" vs. "se vendre" etc. AnonMoos (talk) 11:36, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

"Födas" as a deponent verb
In what way is the Swedish verb "födas" a deponent verb? It clearly has a passive meaning (be born) and the active "föda" (give birth to) exists. To me, it seems it fails every test for being deponent.83.254.140.88 (talk) 08:34, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

Perfect tense with "be" verb
Are all the verbs in French, Spanish etc that form the perfect tense with "be" instead of "have" using a (semi)-deponent form? They seem to fit the "semi-deponent" (active form in the present, passive form in the perfect) definition at the very least. Walshie79 (talk) 00:09, 16 March 2021 (UTC)


 * Traditionally, intransitive verbs form the perfect with TO BE while transitive verbs used TO HAVE. English formerly did this also (for example "Christ is risen", "He is come" etc).  It's hard for me to see how these verbs are "passive" in any meaningful sense (the grammatical subject has exactly the same semantic role in "he came" as in "he is come").  A deponent verb in French would be more like a verb which never occurred in the non-reflexive (i.e. without "se" etc). AnonMoos (talk) 00:31, 16 March 2021 (UTC)


 * I think you are wrong about Spanish. If I am understanding you right, you are confusing he venido with sono venuto. --Error (talk) 16:07, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Unaccusative verbs might be active-less. Universal-Interessierter de (talk (de)) 22:43, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Danish section
The Danish section claims that Danish has fewer deponents than Norwegian. According to wiktionary it's unclear: Danish: 20, Norwegian Bokmål: 13, Norwegian Nynorsk: 91. SprogTeknologiske Ordbase / STO Morphological Dictionary Danish has 54 unique deponent verbs. I'm considering removing the comparison and simply state that Danish has 54 deponent verbs according to STO.

The list "the only common ones are" seems dubious to me and feels like an opinion piece. The phrase "vi ses" is certainly extremely common, and known also by young persons.

(talk) 15:47, 5 April 2023 (UTC)


 * Go ahead! It seems a good suggestion. Kanjuzi (talk) 15:58, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

Old English
According to ChapGPT, deponent verbs in Old English include: "willan" (to will, desire): The passive form "willan" was used to express active will or desire. "þurfan" (to need): The passive form "þurfan" was used to express active necessity or need. "dugan" (to be useful): The passive form "dugan" was used to express active usefulness or benefit.

Can someone verify that? Stjohn1970 (talk) 01:40, 14 August 2023 (UTC)\


 * Old English simply did not have "synthetic" (inflectional) passives, except perhaps for one form of the verb which has come down into early modern English as "hight" (i.e. to be called or be named). AnonMoos (talk) 22:24, 14 August 2023 (UTC)