I am calling on you various scholars to please help me out with a difficulty I have regarding Greek and Sanskrit grammar.
I don't really understand the meaning of the "middle" voice. Most dictionary definitions say it indicates a reflexive action. If this is its meaning, why is it not called the "reflexive" voice? And also, didn't IE have a reflexive pronoun that could have served just as well in this function, with a verb in the active voice? Why is a whole other voice necessary?
Many people who explain the middle voice to English speakers use examples such as "the cake bakes in the oven", "his book sold a thousand copies", and the like. But to me such expressions are really passive, i.e. the cake is being baked (by the baker) in the oven, and a thousand copies of the book were sold. Is this really how the middle was used in Greek and Sanskrit? It seems to me that the middle voice is unnecessary here, the passive will do just fine. And also such constructions in English are limited to inanimate subjects, in the third person - how could such constructions appear in the first or second persons? It seems to me that if this is the primary use of the middle voice, then the middle voice would never occur in the first or second persons. Furthermore, Greek verbs in the present and imperfect of the middle voice are identical to the same tenses of the passive voice - did Greek really distinguish
middle from passive?
So what is the basic meaning of the middle voice? Is it simply reflexive? If so, why didn't IE use its reflexive pronoun instead?
I will appreciate any replies.
Andrew Jarrette