I'm afraid, with the possible exception of "they are brought up", all of those examples seem generally reflexive to me.  But I've always been a little fuzzy on linguistic rules.

Jamie

----- Original Message -----
From: "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@...>
To: "wyrdplace@..." <norse_course@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 26, 2010 1:41:29 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: Re[2]: [norse_course] Middle forms of verbs strong and weak

At 7:41:30 PM on Monday, January 25, 2010,
wyrdplace@... wrote:

> This is taken from an online ancient Greek tutorial, but
> it sums up the difference between active, passive and
> middle verbs, and I believe it applies to Old Norse:

Not really, because the <-sk> form in ON isn't actually a
voice at all in the sense that active and passive are
voices.  It's a verbal inflection that has a variety of
functions.  Sometimes it's reflexive: <hann nefndisk> 'he
named himself' is equivalent to <hann nefndi sik>, with the
reflexive pronoun.  (Indeed, this may be the origin of the
form.)  Sometimes it's passive: <þeir fœðizk> 'they are
brought up'.  Sometimes it's reciprocal: <bítask> 'bite each
other'.  Sometimes it significantly changes the meaning of
the verb: <gera> 'to make, to do', but <gerask> 'to become'.
(This may have developed from a reflexive sense, 'to make
oneself (into)' or the like, but the meaning is much more
general than that.)  There are even some verbs that have
*only* an <-sk> form, like <óttask> 'to fear'.  As Michael
Barnes says, it's probably best to treat <-sk> forms as
separate verbs, at least when you're starting.

Brian