Middle Voice In Modern Greek: Meaning And Function Of An Inflectional Category (studies In Language Companion Series)

This book provides an in-depth analysis of the inflectional middle category in Modern Greek. Against the theoretical backdrop of cognitive linguistics, it is argued that a wide range of seemingly disparate middle structures in Modern Greek comprise a complex semantic network, and that this network is organized around two prototypical middle event types, which are noninitiative emotional response and spontaneous change of state. In those cases where middle structures have active counterparts, middle and active variants of the same verb stem are compared in order to demonstrate more clearly the semantic distinctions and pragmatic functions encoded by inflectional middle voice in Modern Greek. Major semantic groupings of middle structures treated include emotional response in particular and psycho-emotive experience in general, spontaneous change of state and/or the resulting state, agent-induced events in which an agent subject is (emotionally) involved with or affected by some aspect of the designated situation, passive-like events in which a patient subject is affected by a nonfocal agent, implicit or specified, and reflexive-like events in which a patient subject and an unspecified agent may overlap to varying degrees. slcs 48 MIDDLE VOICE IN MODERN GREEK 2 Editorial page 3 Title page 4 LCC data 5 Dedication 6 Acknowledgements 10 Abstract 14 Table of contents 16 Chapter 1. Defining the problem 23 Chapter 2. Prolegomena to a study of Modern Greek middle voice 37 Chapter 3. Experiencer subject structures 93 Chapter 4. Agent subject structures 143 Chapter 5. Spontaneous change of state, stative, and passive structures 187 Chapter 6. Reflexive Structures 225 Appendix A: 94 Middle Verbs: Psycho-Emotive Response 259 Appendix B: 146 Middle Verbs: Spontaneous Change / Change of State / State 269 References 279 Author Index 289 Subject Index 293 STUDIES IN LANGUAGE COMPANION SERIES (SLCS) 299 Following a definition of the problem and objectives of the present study, this work examines middle voice in modern Greek. Chapters cover: experiencer subject structures; agent subject structures; spontaneous change of state, stative and passive structures; and reflexive structures.