Deponent verb

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In linguistics, a deponent verb is a verb that is active in meaning but takes its form from a different voice, most commonly the middle or passive.

1 Languages with deponent verbs
2 Deponency and tense
3 Peculiar issues in Greek
4 Examples
5 See also
6 Sources
7 References

[edit] Languages with deponent verbs

This list is not exhaustive.

Greek has middle-voice deponents (some of which are very common) and some passive-voice deponents. An example in Greek is ερχομαι (erchomai, I come or I go), middle/passive in form but active in translation.
Latin had passive-voice deponents, such as loqui ('to speak'), pati ('to endure') and sequi ('to follow'). Additionally, four Latin verbs (audere, to dare; gaudere, to rejoice; solere, to be accustomed; and fidere, to trust) are called semi-deponent, because though they look passive in the perfect tenses, they are semantically active in all tenses.
Swedish has a few passive-voice deponents, although interestingly, its closely related neighbour languages Danish and Norwegian don't have them. Indeed, Norwegian shows the opposite trend: like in English, active verbs are sometimes used with a passive sense, such as in "boka solgte 1000 eksemplarer" ("the book sold 1000 copies").
In Japanese, at first sight it might seem as though the passive voice can be used to increase the degree of politeness in a sentence, thereby establishing the existence of deponent verbs. However, it is merely by coincidence that the passive suffix corresponds exactly to a method of expressing politeness; Inoue Fumio's Nihongo Wocchingu notes that grammar texts dating from the Heian era list the four uses of the auxiliary -ru/-reru (which has become -reru/-rareru in modern Japanese) as indicating intransitivity, the potential mood (as distinct from the tentative mood), the passive voice, and honorifics.

[edit] Deponency and tense

Some verbs are deponent universally, but other verbs are deponent only in certain tenses, or use deponent forms from different voices in different tenses. For example, the Greek verb αναβαινω (anabaino) uses active forms in the imperfect and aorist, but in the future it is a middle-voice deponent, αναβησομαι (anabesomai). If it were not deponent, the future active form would be αναβαισω (anabaiso), but this form does not occur in Koine Greek, because the verb is deponent in the future tense. The future forms that do occur have the same meaning and translation value that the active forms would have if they occurred.

[edit] Peculiar issues in Greek

Koine Greek has a few verbs which have very different meanings in the active and middle/passive forms. For example, ἁπτω ('hapto') means "I burn," whereas its middle form ἁπτομαι ('haptomai') means "I touch." Because ἁπτομαι is much more common in usage, beginners often learn this form first and are tempted to assume that it is a deponent. 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 themself with when they come or go.^[1]

[edit] Examples

Swedish andas ("breathe", deponent), Danish and Norwegian Bokmål ånde ("breathe", non-deponent).
Swedish hoppas ("hope", deponent), Danish håbe, Norwegian Bokmål håpe ("hope", non-deponent).

[edit] See also

Defective verb

[edit] Sources

Greek example αναβησομαι (anabesomai) taken from the principal parts table in the appendix to Basics of Biblical Greek Grammar, William D. Mounce.