Middle voice (grammatical)
A verb in English may be in one or other of two voices. It is in the active voice, when the subject of the verb is the agent of the action denoted by the verb (as in ‘The cat chases the dog’ or ‘The doctor examined the patient’); and in the passive voice, when the subject of the verb is the object or recipient of the action denoted by the verb (as in ‘The dog is chased by the cat’ or ‘The patient was examined by the doctor’), For more see Voice (grammatical).
In some languages, however, e.g., Ancient Greek, a verb may be in neither the active nor the passive voice but in a third voice, usually known as the middle voice. What is distinctive of a verb in the middle voice is that its subject is both the agent of the action denoted by the verb and also, directly or indirectly, its object, recipient, or beneficiary – i.e., a verb in the middle voice has a reflexive sense, either directly or indirectly, either explicitly or implicitly.
It is hard to give a full and accurate account of the range of possibilities here but a selection of examples may prove helpful.
Many Greek verbs in the middle voice have a straightforwardly reflexive meaning and are translatable into English as simple reflexives, e.g., λούω (louō), ‘I wash’ (transitive) has the middle λούομαι (louomai), ‘I wash myself’; and κόπτω (koptō), ‘I hit or strike’, has the middle κόπτομαι (koptomai), ‘I hit or strike myself’. Sometimes the straightforward reflexive use has developed a more complex or more specific meaning, e.g., κόπτομαι (koptomai) is sometimes used to mean ‘I strike myself in grief’ and so acquires the meaning ‘I grieve or mourn (for someone)’. Rather differently, a verb in the middle voice may convey the idea that the action carried out by the subject of the verb is to his or her benefit or advantage: thus λύω (luō), ‘I free, unfasten’ has the middle λύομαι (luomai), ‘I free for myself, I release by payment of a ransom’, while αἱρέω (haireō),‘I take’ has αἱροῦμαι (hairoumai), ‘I take for myself, I choose, I prefer’. Differently again, use of the middle voice may be appropriate when I employ someone else to act on my behalf, e.g., διδάσκω (didaskō), ‘I teach’ yields διδάσκομαι (didaskomai), ‘I have (e.g., my son) taught (by someone else)’.
For most tenses of the Greek verb – specifically, for all tenses except the future and aorist - the forms for the middle voice are identical to those for the passive voice. So, e.g., ἐγείρομαι (egeiromai) could mean either ‘I wake up’ (i.e., ‘I wake myself up’, middle voice) or ‘I am woken’ (by someone else, passive voice). In cases like this it is only possible to tell from the context, if at all, whether the verb is in the middle or in the passive voice.
This page has taken its examples of the middle voice exclusively from Ancient Greek. English, in common with many other languages, does not have a middle voice, but other languages which do include Albanian, Bengali, Fulani (a language spoken in parts of west and central Africa), Tamil, Sanskrit, and Swedish.
