# Deponent Verbs



## Agarina

Does anyone know how the deponent developed?


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## rainbowizard

These verbs are told "deponent" because they _deposuerunt_(that is they dropped) the ancient active form while keeping the active meaning.


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## Agarina

Yeah, I knew about that, but I was wondering why the Romans might have done that.  This might be a question that isn't able to be answered, as it's just one of those things that developed over the years, but is there any practical reason why it might have happened?


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## rainbowizard

Probably these verbs originally had an active form (then dropped) and a passive form with a connotation similar to that of _middle_ mode of ancient Greek.

I did not study ancient Greek, but I know that _middle_ mode is indicative of the fact that the grammatical subject is entering into a state or condition or action either on his own initiative or in response to some external stimulus or cause or even spontaneously.

See http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/Docs/UndAncGrkVc.pdf for further details.

Latin deponent verbs dropped the active form and kept the passive mode that we express as active but that should be slightly different form a simple active mode... it should manifest the concernment of the grammatical subject in the action performed, as it is for the middle mode in Greek.

Fuzzy??  Maybe


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## wonderment

rainbowizard said:


> Probably these verbs originally had an active form (then dropped) and a passive form with a connotation similar to that of _middle_ mode of ancient Greek.
> 
> I did not study ancient Greek, but I know that _middle_ mode is indicative of the fact that the grammatical subject is entering into a state or condition or action either on his own initiative or in response to some external stimulus or cause or even spontaneously.
> [...]
> Latin deponent verbs dropped the active form and kept the passive mode that we express as active but that should be slightly different form a simple active mode... it should manifest the concernment of the grammatical subject in the action performed, as it is for the middle mode in Greek.
> 
> Fuzzy??  Maybe



Oh, not fuzzy at all,   especially if we look at some examples of deponent verbs:

_loquor_ (speak), _reor _(think), _patior_ (suffer), _morior_ (die), _nascor _(be born), _orior_ (arise), _labor_ (fall), _proficiscor_ (set out), _revertor_ (return)

A shared aspect of these verbs is that, precisely as you put it, “they manifest the concern of the grammatical subject in the action performed.” They tend to be intransitive (i.e. they don't take a direct object). The action of the verb concerns primarily the subject of the verb and its effect on him.


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## Spectre scolaire

rainbowizard said:
			
		

> Probably these verbs originally had an active form (then dropped) and a passive form with a connotation similar to that of middle mode of ancient Greek.


 In Latin, this may well be the case, but the whole concept of _deponent verbs_ is a problematic one.

The article by C. W. Conrad (which you refer to), states in section 5 So-called “Deponent” verbs the following:




> In fact, however, the term and concept of “deponency” is confusing and misleadning. Verbs such as ἔρχομαι [...] ought not to be considered in any way irregular or wanting because they have no “active-voice” forms.


 Indeed, an active form *ἔρχω never ever existed. 




> It may be difficult for non-Greek speakers to grasp the distinctive notion implicit in these “middle-passive” forms, [etc.]


 There is simply nothing irregular about them. Understanding “deponency” in Latin may be easier through a Greek mirror, so to say. 

But the way, when the author refers to “Greek speakers”, I wonder if he actually means persons in his texts...  In fact, no Greek of today could be asked to “grasp [this] distinctive notion.” Classical Greek was always better understood in the West than in Greece itself.
 ​


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## Flaminius

Charles Guiraud, _Grammaire du grec_ (Collection QUE SAIS-JE? 1967), argues that the oldest voice system in Greek was the opposition between active and middle (the agent of an action being related to the action in a special manner or being at the centre of the action).  The Greek passive voice, therefore, developed out of middle voice.

If a similar development holds true for the Latin verb system —which is more than likely, the thread topic is better pursued in a question, "How did 'passive endings' (_-or_, _-ris_, _-tur_, _-mur_, _-mini_, _-ntur_) come to reject direct objects?"


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## Cagey

Beekes in _Comparative Indo-European Linguistics_ (1995) concludes that proto-Indo-European had a middle but no passive, and that the passive developed later in the individual languages.  In his chart, the person-endings for the middle voice that Latin derived from PIE are those we recognize as the person endings for the passive voice, which presumably is a later development.   This lends support to some of the hypotheses presented in posts above.


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