Since the active and middle voices of the 2nd aorist forms of “to stand” are intransitive (ἵστημι – ἔστην vs ἐστάμην), are these forms synonymous?

James Garry’s answer to Since the active and middle voices of the 2nd aorist forms of “to stand” are intransitive (ἵστημι – ἔστην vs ἐστάμην), are these forms synonymous? This is the answer to this question. And my thanks, James.

What I’m writing here is an answer to a more general question: how much do active/middle voice distinctions matter? It’s an elaboration of Nick Nicholas’ answer to In Ancient Greek, does the middle voice of φιλέω (φιλέομαι) mean “I love in my own interest,” “I love myself,” (reflexive) or “I am loved” (passive)?

My thanks for your indulgence.


English distinguishes between Active and Passive verbs. The distinction is fairly clear cut. An intransitive verb is always active. If a transitive verb is active, the subject is doing stuff; if the transitive verb is passive, the subject is having stuff done to them.

Homeric Greek worked on a different, Active/Middle distinction; in many ways, that distinction has lasted to this day. In that distinction, if a verb is transitive, the active still means you’re doing stuff, and the middle means you’re having stuff done to you. Or that you’re doing it to yourself. Or that you’re doing it for yourself. Or that you’re doing it to each other.

And that’s the easy bit.

What happens when the verb is intransitive?

When the verb is intransitive, it could be active, or it could be middle.

There is a kind of semantics to it. Kind of. If the intransitive verb is active, it means that you’re doing stuff, you’re acting. If the intransitive verb is middle, it means that you’re just sitting there, that you’re passive—or at least, that your actions are inward. So run or go are active. Work or sleep are middle.

Does that distinction sound unconvincing? Good. Because it was.

I mean, the distinction was there. But it was not stable, and it was not consistent, and it was not rigorous.

The distinction was inconsistent enough that some intransitive verbs got to be either active or middle; lampō ‘shine’, for example. In fact, some perfectly transitive verbs also got to be either. So for lambanō, there is an active usage, meaning ‘take’, and a middle usage, meaning ‘take hold of, seize’.

Now, if you are approaching grammar synchronically, like a good structuralist, any contrast in grammatical form must correspond to some contrast in meaning. There has to be some nuance there; some notion of more active vs more passive, some connotation picked up from other actives or middles, some subtlety. It can’t just be random.

People speaking the language at a point in time have good reason to think so. Writers are certainly going to be alert to all the connotations and resonances latent in the language, and they will exploit them. Yes, synchronically there is no such thing as a true synonym.

If you’re working in the diachronic model, you are much more cynical about structuralist notions of paradigm and meaning distinctions, because your business involves watching those structures morph and evaporate.

It’s an overly fuzzy view of language. It’s why a century of Indo-European historical linguistics, which focussed primarily on phonology, did not come up with a concept of the phoneme: it was too busy seeing sounds change to work out the structure of sounds. But it’s a healthy cynicism to bring to bear, when there are overly subtle nuances in play. Even if they’re there, they’re evanescent.

The instance that has made me sceptical about fine active/middle nuances in Greek is phaîo. It’s a verb I spent hours trying to work out in Pindar: The tale of φαῖο.

I couldn’t work it out, because it wasn’t in the grammar books: the 19th century editions of Pindar, that the grammar books were based on, used the active optative of ‘you would say’, φαίης, and that’s what the grammars had documented. The 1971 edition of Pindar switched to the middle optative φαῖο. Both forms turn up in manuscripts.

‘Say’ is one of those intransitive verbs that could appear in the active or in the middle (in the optative mood in particular). Was there a subtle semantics involved? Was there a notion of actively saying something versus passively saying something? Like, asserting versus conceding, or something like that?

Nah. It’s much simpler than that. It’s a dialect difference. Attic used the active in the optative of phēmi ‘say’; Doric, the dialect of Pindar, used the middle. (The edition switched the voice, because they figured that the scribes that had copied Pindar over the generations were more familiar with Attic than Doric.) Attic used the active and Doric the middle, not because Athenians were more assertive than Spartans, or anything like that. It was simply a random choice, that the dialects made in one mood of one verb, when they split apart.

Just like Greek, a few centuries later, replaced the middle ergazomai ‘work’ with the active douleuō ‘originally: to slave away’. No nuance there. Not in the long run: in the long run, nuance gets squashed and overrun by the shifts of language.

Lucky are those who settle down to a single period of language, that delve into its treasures, and that look upon its nuance and subtleties and paradigmatic contrasts as something more substantial, more rich, more verdant—than the cobwebs that Time knows them to be.

Don’t weep for historical linguists, though. We have our own entertainments. And sometimes, we pause to read the literature too, and let go of our cynicism.

What conclusions do you make based on which of your answers gets the most upvotes?

I’m sure I’ve seen variants of this question already.

I have not concluded that pictures matter; I use them sparingly, but they don’t seem to act as instant clickbait.

What I have concluded from upvotes—and these are fairly common conclusions—are:

  • Anything mentioning anything Indian gets lots
  • Anything mentioning American politics gets lots
  • Survey questions get lots
  • Fluffy banter-y answers get lots
  • Scholarly specialist answers don’t get lots…
    • … but they get more than you might think.

And:

  • I’m not particularly fussed by which kinds of answers get the most upvotes. I’m not above gamification, but the upvote lotto is so random, it does not serve as an effective motivator for me.

What do very popular non-Top Writers think they’d need to change in order to become Top Writers?

Well, Kyle, you did A2A me. I think you must have had some idea what you were going to get in response.

Seems like most of these writers don’t actually care much about getting the designation.

Eeyup. And let me not launch into another jeremiad about The Quill. Let me instead link to someone else’s very good jeremiad about The Quill: Lance LaSalle’s answer to Are you disappointed in the March 2017 Top Writer announcements?

I know my worth, and so do the users I interact with. I don’t need a jacket or a buffet to tell me so. Especially a jacket or a buffet from as unresponsive and capricious an organisation as Quora has shown itself to be.

But if they were to engage in a bit of self-evaluation,

Oooh, them’s fighting words, Kyle. 🙂

what do they think they’d have to do differently in order for the selection team to include them?

I’ve heard a rumour that people who don’t get The Quill actually contact Quora staff to ask them that.

It’ll be a frosty day on the Acheron before I do so. (Assuming there even is a selection team, as opposed to an algorithm.) I don’t have to, mercifully; I have positive feedback from flesh and blood users, like Jennifer Edeburn, who has in fact helped me improve my writing through two suggestions: (a) provide more context and explanation; (b) tone down the venom.

Why yes, I have toned down the venom. You should have seen what I was writing a year ago.

What others have speculated about in this thread, which is already making me inch to use my block button?

  • Run-ins with Moderation. No. Two BNBRs in two years, both of them nonsensical tone-policing. There are in fact TWs who have been outright banned and unbanned before making The Quill. So it ain’t that.
    • I’d be violating BNBR if I named the respondent in this thread I’m now blocking, for his answer about it being all about moderation. Manifestly not the case.
  • Niche. Oh, I got niche, and an academic niche at at that. It doesn’t get more niche than Greek linguistics.
  • Community mindedness. Third parties have said how I go out of my way to make people feel welcome here. I topic gnome now and then; I even hit the Report button on occasion.
  • Write less on the humanities, and more IT. No. If Quora don’t value humanities stuff, that’s their problem. See also Sean Kernan’s answer.
  • Stop being critical of Quora, where such criticism is deserved. Is this a deal-breaker for The Quill? Apparently not: John Gragson has found himself with one. Will I stop being critical of Quora? No. John hasn’t, after all.

I don’t see what I need to change to get The Quill. Or at least, what I need to change, that I’d be prepared to change.

I’m not a fan of Feifei Wang’s writing, but there are times I find she truly hits the nail on the head; she did so with her answer here. (And even more so with her retort in comments. Seriously. Read it, and savour it.)

So did Jeremy Markeith Thompson. So did Jordan Yates. So did Gigi J Wolf. So did Michael Masiello.

So did Lance LaSalle:

I thought to myself, I thought: damn, if I have to change my writing style, (include less humor, for example, or make it a bit drier and more direct, and include some footnotes) than I really don’t want it. I got people to meet. Decisions to make. Cakes to bake, etc.

Quill-bearers, I’m happy for you. And I’ve congratulated all my friends who got a quill this year.

But I feel no envy towards you. I don’t feel that I’m missing out on anything. If it comes to self-evaluation, I’ll take Jennifer’s advice on how to write better, over a black box’s. And if it comes to having a drink with friends (with better quality nibbles than Quora appears to fork out for), just let me know when any of you come to Melbourne.

Any of you I haven’t blocked, that is… 🙂

What is your favourite topic to write answers on, on Quora?

That vague and interstitial domain known as Cultural Studies.

It’s an area I have very little formal training in, and have lots of opinions about. Because I have little formal training, I am forced to think hard about whether my speculations stand up to scrutiny, and I put extra effort into structuring an argument. That, I find very enjoyable.

I enjoy writing about stuff I am actually trained in, as well. But that’s not nearly as challenging.

When did the Greeks start using Arabic numerals, and what numerical system preceded it?

16th century, though they were aware of the Arabic system from the 14th century. It was preceded by Milesian numerals, which were universal by the 1st century AD; before that, they used variants of Attic numerals.

See Nick Nicholas’ answer to Did ancient Greek scholars ever adapt Roman numerals? for more detail of Arabic numeral adoption.

Does βαμπίρ have female and plural forms in modern Greek?

Being a foreign word ending in a non-Greek ending, there is no plural. In Modern Greek, if a noun ends in something other than a vowel or sigma, it can’t be declined. (Nu is archaic; rho xi psi even more so.) So το βαμπίρ, τα βαμπίρ.

I see that at least one person online has named themselves Vampirissa “vampiress”, forming a feminine of the form. But that would be considered informal usage: formal usage would just put a feminine article in front of βαμπίρ.

There is a reason unassimilated loanwords suck.

Does Quora care about paid trolls? Is there a way to report accounts suspected of being such?

As any search for “Quora” on Upwork will show, plenty of people are being paid to write answers on Quora, without being state agents. Quora has strictures against spam; it does not have strictures that I know of against propaganda.

From my outside perspective, I keep thinking Quora is one bad news story away from being in a world of hurt. But the bad news story hasn’t happened since 2014. And at least this year they’ve hired a lawyer.

Spam is not the right category for suspected professional propaganda or astroturf, but it’s close enough to serve for reporting, and it’s better than mere “factually inaccurate”. Do give an argument for your suspicion if you make a report, though.

Are βαμπιρ and βρικόλακας the same word in modern Greek?

As other answers have pointed out, the vrikolakas is an indigenous Greek creature rising from the grave, with its own mythology, which is only somewhat similar with that of the vampire. Andreas Karkavitsas‘ harrowing novella The Beggar (1897) depicts the associated superstitions in detail.

When I was a kid, as far as I remember, the Vampires of Eastern Europe or Hollywood were rendered as vrikolakas. They now appear to be rendered as vampir. If you are referring to the vampires of western popular culture, as opposed to blood drinking beings that people used to actually be afraid of, vampir is a safe bet.

What are your results on the new 8values political ideology test?

You know, for someone who has said publicly that they have made their peace with the market, I’m still scoring pretty socialist. For someone who despairs of the morass of modern Western democracy, I’m still scoring pretty democratic. For someone who thinks globalisation is proving a mistake, I’m still scoring pretty internationalist. And for someone who thinks there is more to tradition than the (non-American) Western consensus admits, I’m still scoring pretty progressive.

I don’t think the problem is the test (although I did put in some “neutral” answers). I think the problem is that I keep thinking I really am supposed to be Ché Guevara, and I’m a disappointment when I turn out to be a mere Fabian…