TRANSACTIONS 



OF THE 



NEW ZEALAND INSTITUTE, 



1889. 



I.— MISCELLANEOU S. 



Art. I. — The Middle Voice in Latin. 



By Henry Belcher, Fellow of King's College, London, 

 Eector of the High School of Otago. 



[Read before the Otago Institute, IMh June, 1887.1 

 " All verbs which refer primarily to a physical process, and do 

 not merely state the fact that such-and-such an action is going 

 on, are either deponent throughout, or deponents in the future 

 tense. 



"In other words, if the primary reference of a verb is to 

 any physical action, functional or organic, that verb has the 

 inflexions of the middle voice either in all its tenses or in one 

 — the future."''' 



The article (cccii.) contains Dr. Eutherford's proof of the 

 proposition advanced, and the proof appears to me conclusive. 



The pre-eminence of the future middle forms in Greek has 

 long been a difficulty with Greek students. There is no 

 obvious reason why future-tense forms should predominate as 

 reflexive or middle. If there is any subtle significance attach- 

 ing to future actions so that a reflexive force should be 

 felt to be inherent in them, and that such force should be 

 expressed by inflexions, the significance is so subtle that it 

 evades discovery. In Latin as in French and Spanish the 

 future is built up of auxiliaries, while in O. English at the 

 state of high inflexional condition there was no future tense. 



The reflexive pronoun and the Greek future suffix have the 

 letter s common to both. This significant s is a remarkable 

 fragment of language. As regards the reflexive pronoun there 

 seems to be evidence that se, which within the literary period 

 has represented the third grammatical person, had at a 



* Eutherford: New Phrynichus, p. 383. 



