The Curious Case of the Transitive Middle in the Ancient Indo-European Languages: Evidence from Homeric Greek

This paper addresses the question of the transitive middle in ancient Greek, with the aim of understanding the principles underlying the functional relationship between unaccusative and transitive middle. The results of a study on Homeric poems are reported, and a model is proposed to account for the pattern of extension of the middle that links the unaccusative prototype with the various types and sub-types of transitive middles. In this pattern, subject affectedness, reflexivity, and possession play a crucial role, which is consistent with the prototypical and archetypical function of the middle in the ancient Indo-European languages.