Is there something like an "anti-deponent" verb in Latin?

Question

Deponent verbs are those who are written (normally) in passive form but are active in meaning. loquor, loquī, locūtus sum is a common example in Latin. I wonder if the opposite exists, i.e. a verb which is active in form but passive in meaning. To be honest, I cannot even think of one in Spanish or English, which might indicate that this does not exist in Latin either. Any ideas?

Related: https://latin.stackexchange.com/questions/1443/active-verbs-with-passive-meanings — brianpck, Dec 01 '20 at 15:56

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 01 '20 at 15:44

4

These are the textbook examples:

Fio (and its compounds) functions as the passive of facio (and its compounds). It even can take an agent. But it has some passive forms (fieri, factus sum).
Veneo functions as the passive of vendo.

answered Dec 01 '20 at 15:44

Nolmendil

436
2
4

Those are good ones! Do you know if veneo can take an agent? Or are there other signs that it functions syntactically, not just semantically, as a passive of vendo? – Joonas Ilmavirta Dec 01 '20 at 15:54
I don't know, I have never seen it but have little experience with texts with this verb. Ablative without preposition, at any rate, is that of price, not agent, here. – Nolmendil Dec 01 '20 at 16:39

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 01 '20 at 15:59

Another common example that comes to mind is vapulo, -are, which means "to be beaten."

In at least one case cited in L&S from Quintilian's Institutio Oratoria, vapulo can even be paired with an ablative of agent:

. . . testis in reum, rogatus an ab reo fustibus uapulasset, 'innocens', inquit. . . .

score 4 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 06 '18 at 15:21

I would argue that iac&emacr;re is of this kind. Morphologically it is fully active, but semantically it can be seen as a passive form of iacĕre. Lewis and Short describe it as "to be thrown" and hence "to lie". However, iac&emacr;re is not syntactically fully passive: It is intransitive so it takes no objects, but to my knowledge it cannot take an agent.

There may well be more verbs like this, but the pair iacere/iacere is the most common one I know. Many verbs of the second conjugation describe a state rather than an action, which is well compatible with the -&emacr;- working as a passive indicator here.

Interesting. Now I might finally be able to remember which is iacēre and which is iacĕre! — Ben Kovitz, Sep 14 '19 at 01:14

Is there something like an "anti-deponent" verb in Latin?

3 Answers3