Logos New Testament Morphology and Deponent Verbs
In working with the Greek New Testament, I generally like Logos Morphology Codes; but, I find them lacking when it comes to deponent verbs. The Logos morph tags for deponent verbs are puzzling to me. Although deponent verbs take middle/passive inflectional endings, they are translated active. In the Logos morph tagging system, some deponent verbs are tagged as active voice, but many others are tagged as middle, passive, or undefined although they are obviously active voice (see boulomai in Mat 1:19).
Can anyone shed any light on Logos' philosophy/methodology for tagging deponent verbs, or is the database just full of errors?
Thanks,
Terry
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I don't think I can answer that question directly. I asked a similar question in August. Look at this thread, I hope it helps.
"For the kingdom of God does not consist in words but in power"
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Terry M Moore said:
The Logos morph tags for deponent verbs are puzzling to me. Although deponent verbs take middle/passive inflectional endings, they are translated active.
That is a perfectly acceptable purely morphological classification of these verbs. Sometimes, where there is uncertainty, the words are tagged as middle/passive, presumably to allow searching on either voice.
What I don't get is why a search for lemma:βούλομαι@V?M finds nothing in the NA27 Greek New Testament. Passive returns only 4 instances (all aorist passive). So somehow the search engine is failing to find the middle forms of βούλομαι. It works for other verbs I have tested at random, such as lemma:ἔρχομαι@V?M.
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The majority of tags for βούλομαι have the voice as "undefined." Searching for lemma:βούλομαι@V?U in the NA27 returns 66 hits. From Logos' perspective, βούλομαι does not occur in the middle voice, and I think they're probably right. Do you have a scripture ref where you believe it is middle?
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Terry M Moore said:
From Logos' perspective, βούλομαι does not occur in the middle voice, and I think they're probably right. Do you have a scripture ref where you believe it is middle?
I think the point they are making is that for some tenses (present, imperfect, perfect) the middle and passive are the same form. So whether it is middle or passive is determined by context. Many of these are deponent verbs, that never occur in the active form.
Terry M Moore said:Do you
have a scripture ref where you believe it is middle?Just about any example will do. The meaning in the middle is "desire" or "intend, plan, will". These are usually followed by an infinitive indicating what the subject desires to do (most common) or possibly a direct object (apparently only outside the New Testament). So in English these would be translated by active voice. Examples include Mark 15:15 (Pilate wanted to satisfy the crowd), Acts 5:28 (the people wanted to kill them), Titus 3:8 ("I want to speak confidently").
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Deponent verbs (ending with --mai) always take middle/passive inflectional endings, but they are normally translated as active voice. I say usually because some grammarians say that "true" deponent verbs can be middle or passive voice, while others say all deponent verbs should be translated in the active voice. As far as your examples go, the meaning of "desire, plan, inten, will" is in the word itself, not the voice. The middle voice emphasises the subject in a reflexive sense. For example in 2 Cor 11:14 μετασχηματίζω meaning "disquise" in the active voice becomes "disguises himself" in the middle. At the time of the writing of the NT the middle voice was going out of "style" and was being replaced with the reflexive pronoun.
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