Deponent verb

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. A deponent verb has no active forms. This list may not be exhaustive. Ancient Greek verbs and Koine Greek grammar Ancient Greek has middle-voice deponents (some of which are very common) and some passive-voice deponents. An example in classical Greek is ἔρχομαι (, 'I come' or 'I go'), middle/passive in form but translated into English using the active voice (since English has no middle voice). Some 'active' verbs will take middle-form futures, such as how ἀκούω (, 'I hear') becomes ἀκούσομαι (, 'I will hear'), rather than the regular adding of a sigma (like παύω (, 'I stop') becoming παύσω (, 'I will stop')). These are still translated into English as active. For these verbs, there is no future middle, but the future passive is unaffected. Koine Greek has a few verbs which have very different meanings in the active and middle/passive forms. For example, ἁπτω () means "I set fire to", whereas its middle form ἁπτομαι () 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. Latin deponent verbs can belong to any conjugation. Their form (except in the present and future participle) is that of a passive verb, but the meaning is active. Usually a deponent verb has no corresponding active form, although there are a few, such as vertō 'I turn (transitive)' and vertor 'I turn (intransitive)' which have both active and deponent forms. Examples are hortārī ('to exhort'), verērī ('to fear'), loquī ('to speak'), blandīrī ('to flatter'), and many more. The forms regularly follow those of the passive of normal verbs: Deponents have all the participles normal verbs do, although those of the perfect carry an active meaning, rather than a passive meaning as in the case of normal verbs. Some deponent verbs, such as sequī (to follow), use the corresponding forms of other verbs to express a genuine passive meaning.

About this result

This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.

Related concepts (5)

Related lectures (1)

Voice (grammar)

In grammar, the voice (aka diathesis) of a verb describes the relationship between the action (or state) that the verb expresses and the participants identified by its arguments (subject, object, etc.). When the subject is the agent or doer of the action, the verb is in the active voice. When the subject is the patient, target or undergoer of the action, the verb is said to be in the passive voice. When the subject both performs and receives the action expressed by the verb, the verb is in the middle voice.

Latin conjugation

In linguistics and grammar, conjugation has two basic meanings. One meaning is the creation of derived forms of a verb from basic forms, or principal parts. The second meaning of the word conjugation is a group of verbs which all have the same pattern of inflections. Thus all those Latin verbs which in the present tense have 1st singular -ō, 2nd singular -ās, and infinitive -āre are said to belong to the 1st conjugation, those with 1st singular -eō, 2nd singular -ēs and infinitive -ēre belong to the 2nd conjugation, and so on.

Passive voice

A passive voice construction is a grammatical voice construction that is found in many languages. In a clause with passive voice, the grammatical subject expresses the theme or patient of the main verb – that is, the person or thing that undergoes the action or has its state changed. This contrasts with active voice, in which the subject has the agent role. For example, in the passive sentence "The tree was pulled down", the subject (the tree) denotes the patient rather than the agent of the action.

Invariant Definitions

Explores invariant definitions in sets, groups, and automorphisms, including p-divisible groups and free abelian groups.