Passives in the history of Greek: Evidence for the role of the passive suffix

Abstract

The article examines a change in passive constructions in the diachrony of Greek: the use of the nonactive suffix as a specialized marker of passive constructions is a later development in Greek, starting from Late Hellenistic/ Early Byzantine. Evidence is provided mainly by examples of active passives and nonactive transitives in Ancient Greek but not in later periods. The historical data provide arguments in favor of an analysis that postulates the presence of the external argument in passive constructions in the same position as in transitive constructions, and blocking by the nonactive suffix either of (a) one of the internal arguments (Ancient Greek) or (b) the internal argument in the accusative case (Late Hellenistic/Early Byzantine).