Part twenty of a tour through Greek inflectional morphology to help get students thinking more systematically about the word forms they see (and maybe teach a bit of general linguistics along the way).
In part 17, we went through counts for our present active (infinitive and indicative) classes. Now we’ll wrap things up by doing the same for the middle.
Recall this is based on the analysis of 820 tokens available here which was described in the last two parts.
Let us first of all look at the number of distinct lemmas in each of our 14 classes.
| PM-1 | barytone thematics with INF -εσθαι / 3SG -εται | 105 |
|---|---|---|
| PM-2 | circumflex thematics with INF -εῖσθαι / 3SG -εῖται | 21 |
| PM-3 | circumflex thematics with INF -οῦσθαι / 3SG -οῦται (ζηλόω, ἐλαττόω, λυτρόομαι, διαβεβαιόομαι) | 4 |
| PM-4 | circumflex thematics with INF -ᾶσθαι / 3SG -ᾶται | 11 |
| PM-5 | circumflex thematics with INF -ῆσθαι / 3SG -ῆται (χράομαι and compound) | 2 |
| PM-6a | INF -υσθαι / 3SG -υται (ἀπόλλυμι, ἐνδείκνυμι, συναναμίγνυμι) | 3 |
| PM-7 | INF -εσθαι / 3SG -εται (compound of τίθημι) | 3 |
| PM-8 | INF -οσθαι / 3SG -οται | - |
| PM-9 | INF -ασθαι / 3SG -αται (δύναμαι, compounds of ἵστημι) | 8 |
| PM-10 | ἧμαι | - |
| PM-10-COMP | compounds of ἧμαι (κάθημαι) | 1 |
| PM-11 | κεῖμαι | 1 |
| PM-11-COMP | compounds of κεῖμαι | 7 |
| PM-12 | οἶμαι | 1 |
Again, even the small counts are elevated due to compound verbs. Folding compounds of the same base verb, only PM-1, PM-2, PM-3, PM-4, and PM-6a have more than one or two members (and PM-6a only has three).
This is just looking at the number of unique lemmas in each class but there are two other sets of numbers that are worth looking at: (1) the total number of tokens in the SBLGNT; (2) the distribution of classes amongst the hapax legomena.
| class | lemmas | tokens | hapax | hapax details |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PM-1 | 105 | 523 | 45 | |
| PM-2 | 21 | 57 | 7 | |
| PM-3 | 4 | 5 | 3 | ζηλόω ἐλαττόω λυτρόομαι |
| PM-4 | 11 | 33 | 4 | μυκάομαι κοιμάομαι καταράομαι ἐγκαυχάομαι |
| PM-5 | 2 | 2 | 2 | χράομαι and συγχράομαι |
| PM-6a | 3 | 9 | - | |
| PM-7 | 3 | 5 | 2 | διατίθεμαι and μετατίθημι |
| PM-8 | - | - | - | |
| PM-9 | 8 | 156 | 4 | ἐξίστημι ἐφίστημι ἀνθίστημι ἀφίσταμαι |
| PM-10 | - | - | - | |
| PM-10-COMP | 1 | 5 | - | |
| PM-11 | 1 | 9 | - | |
| PM-11-COMP | 7 | 15 | - | |
| PM-12 | 1 | 1 | 1 | οἶμαι |
Recall the hapax legomena matter because they give an indication of what classes were still productive.
If we fold compounds under their base verb, only PM-1, PM-2, PM-3, and PM-4 have more than one hapax legomenon.
Let’s now look at counts for each paradigm cell for each class:
| PM-1 | PM-2 | PM-3 | PM-4 | PM-5 | PM-6a | PM-7 | PM-8 | PM-9 | PM-10-C | PM-11 | PM-11-C | PM-12 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| INF | 89 | 15 | 4 | 8 | - | 4 | - | - | 12 | 2 | - | 3 | - |
| 1SG | 85 | 17 | - | 3 | - | 1 | 4 | - | 9 | 1 | 1 | - | 1 |
| 2SG | 19 | 1 | - | 5 | - | - | - | - | 7 | - | - | - | - |
| 3SG | 228 | 7 | - | 8 | - | - | - | - | 74 | 2 | 7 | 11 | - |
| 1PL | 20 | 4 | - | 3 | 1 | 3 | - | - | 9 | - | 1 | - | - |
| 2PL | 24 | 9 | - | 3 | - | - | 1 | - | 32 | - | - | - | - |
| 3PL | 58 | 4 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 1 | - | - | 13 | - | - | 1 | - |
| 523 | 57 | 5 | 33 | 2 | 9 | 5 | - | 156 | 5 | 9 | 15 | 1 |
As in the active, the 3SG and INF dominate with only a few interesting exceptions. The third person (especially 3SG but also 3PL) is unusually low in PM-2. In PM-9, the 2PL is usually high. This is almost certainly just because of particular lexical items that happen to be in those classes rather than an inherent characteristic of the class itself, although because the origins of some classes are derivational, there may occasionally be tendencies on semantic grounds.
If the goal is just to identify the person/number, not the class, (which is true in reception but not learning) then most of these numbers collapse because of shared endings. Here are the counts just focused on the common endings (without accents):
| INF | -σθαι | 137 |
| 1SG | -μαι | 122 |
| 2SG | -{ι} | 25 |
| -σαι | 7 | |
| 3SG | -ται | 337 |
| 1PL | -μεθα | 41 |
| 2PL | -σθε | 69 |
| 3PL | -νται | 82 |
And that’s it for the present middles. I’ll do a brief summary post next and then we’ll start exploring beyond the presents.