Deponent verb

Traditionally, a deponent verb is a verb that is middle-voice in form but active in its meaning. Such verbs are characterised by existing only with middle-passive endings within a given tense. The active endings are absent. It is possible however, that it other tenses, active endings may be present. The term middle-only is also sometimes used.

More recent research asserts that there is actually no such thing, and that the verbs traditionally considered to be deponents are all proper middle-voice verbs in the sense that they all involve some degree of "subject-affectedness" meaning an action which also affects the actor in some way. Subject-affectedness is akin to the more restrictive idea of reflexive and reciprocal verbs in many other European languages.

An example of a verb considered traditionally as deponent is ἐρχομαι (I come). Here it can be seen that there is some subtle subject-affectedness. After all, the location of the subject is being affected when he executes the action.

Still more recent research posits that the middle and passive voices in Greek actually form a continuum, verbs stand somewhere along this continuum depending on how much the subject is affected by the action. (This is in contrast to the English which appears binary, having voices which are either active or passive only). Some discussions call this medio-passive, middle-passive and so on.

One can compare this usefully with the way Greek is more interested in the quality of the action than English is. One facet of this is to being concerned to give information about the aspect of an action rather than the time. In the same way, one could argue that another facet of the quality of an action is to what extent the subject is affected.

According to Mounce, using the continuum model, the verbs traditionally though of as deponent stand at one end. If actives are on the left and the medio-passive continuum is to the right, with subject-affectedness increasing rightwards, the former deponents stand just inside the left of the range, near to the actives. This is probably because the manner in which the subject is affected is subtle or slight. English, which doesn't have these nuances, translates them as actives.

Regardless of whether the label deponent is applied, it is still useful to know about these verbs because they cluster around one end of the continuum. Some teachers and grammars might still continue to teach them as deponents, and most certainly the term will be encountered when reading older books.

According to Mounce, the verbs traditionally classed as deponent (and which may perhaps get another label soon) fall into several categories or rather they tend to have these attributes:


 * Motion - the position of the subject is changed in some way
 * Emotion
 * Grooming
 * Spontaneous
 * Benefactive
 * Reciprocal
 * Reflexive