Subject affectedness stands as one of the most rigorously theorized concepts in the depth-semantics of voice, receiving its most sustained treatment in Rutger Allan's 2003 monograph on the Ancient Greek middle voice. For Allan, subject affectedness functions as the abstract semantic invariant underwriting the entire polysemous range of middle-voice usage: wherever a verb's subject undergoes internal change, absorbs the consequences of an action, or is cognitively and emotionally implicated in an event, the middle voice is the formally marked vehicle for that involvement. The concept is not to be confused with the narrower Greek notion of pathos—sheer passivity—but encompasses a gradient from prototypical passivehood through spontaneous bodily and mental processes to the indirect reflexive, where benefit accrues to the acting subject. Crucially, Allan argues that the active voice is semantically unspecified with respect to subject affectedness, making the middle the marked, informationally dense pole of the opposition. The concept also illuminates scalar phenomena: degrees of affectedness correlate with telicity, punctuality, and the salience of the change undergone. Where active and middle near-synonyms coexist, the middle either foregrounds inherent affectedness already latent in the lexical root or renders it redundant, confirming the theoretical primacy of the feature. The term thus serves as the organizing axis around which questions of transitivity, voice alternation, and event-structure converge.
In the library
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I will subscribe to the notion of subject-affectedness as the abstract meaning of the middle voice. The advantages of the notion of subject-affectedness are that it is not too vague, and that it potentially subsumes the different middle uses in an adequate fashion.
Allan formally adopts subject affectedness as the defining abstract invariant of the Greek middle voice, arguing it is sufficiently precise to unify all attested middle uses.
Allan, Rutger, The Middle Voice in Ancient Greek A Study of Polysemy, 2003thesis
the active voice is the unmarked member in the opposition with the marked middle voice. Since the active voice can occur in environments in which the subject is affected (contextual neutralization), it can be concluded that the active is unspecified as to the semantic feature subject-affectedness.
Allan demonstrates through markedness criteria that the active voice is semantically neutral with respect to subject affectedness, making the middle voice the positively specified, marked pole of the opposition.
Allan, Rutger, The Middle Voice in Ancient Greek A Study of Polysemy, 2003thesis
The middle ending makes this inherent element conceptually more salient, whereas the active ending - being neutral as to subject-affectedness - does not contribute to the meaning of the verb.
In near-synonymous active-middle pairs, the middle inflection raises to salience a subject affectedness that is already latent in the verb's lexical meaning, while the active ending contributes nothing to that dimension.
Allan, Rutger, The Middle Voice in Ancient Greek A Study of Polysemy, 2003thesis
the middle inflection explicates, and thereby emphasizes the subject-affectedness inherent in the lexical meaning. As I will argue below, the pair βούλομαι - ἐθέλω can also be accounted for by means of this scenario.
Allan argues that the middle ending does not introduce subject affectedness but rather makes explicit and emphatic an affectedness already encoded in the root, illustrating this through the βούλομαι/ἐθέλω pair.
Allan, Rutger, The Middle Voice in Ancient Greek A Study of Polysemy, 2003thesis
The subject-affectedness, therefore, must be an inherent property of the lexical meaning of the verb root. The unmarked active voice can be used since the subject-affectedness is already present in the context (in this case the verb root).
Where active forms express seemingly middle meanings, Allan explains this through the principle that inherent lexical subject affectedness licenses the use of the semantically neutral active inflection.
Allan, Rutger, The Middle Voice in Ancient Greek A Study of Polysemy, 2003thesis
all verbs inherently involve subject-affectedness. This inherent subject-affectedness motivates the presence of the (semantically redundant, cf. Schwyzer & Debrunner's 'Doppelcharakterisierung') middle inflection.
Allan establishes that across semantic classes—motion, perception, mental and speech-act verbs—inherent subject affectedness motivates middle inflection, which in these cases becomes formally redundant.
Allan, Rutger, The Middle Voice in Ancient Greek A Study of Polysemy, 2003supporting
Passive Aorist: ἐτάκη 'it melted' (completed change of state: high subject-affectedness) ... the subjects of the passive aorists are more highly affected than those of the middle presents because they refer to a completed change of state.
Allan shows that passive aorist forms encode high subject affectedness by combining the semantic feature of completedness with subject resemblance to a prototypical patient, producing a scalar model of the concept.
Allan, Rutger, The Middle Voice in Ancient Greek A Study of Polysemy, 2003supporting
in the case of ὁρμάομαι the subject-affectedness is conceptualized as stronger: the verb focuses on the moment in time at which the subject undergoes a change from a stationary position into motion.
Through the ὁρμάω/ὁρμάομαι pair, Allan demonstrates that the middle voice encodes a more cognitively salient degree of subject affectedness linked to punctuality and the foregrounding of change.
Allan, Rutger, The Middle Voice in Ancient Greek A Study of Polysemy, 2003supporting
One cannot simply state: ἐθέλω is active therefore it lacks subject-affectedness, since it is clear that ἐθέλω, like βούλομαι, implies an element of mental involvement on the part of the subject.
Allan cautions against a binary presence/absence reading of subject affectedness in active-middle pairs, arguing the distinction is one of salience and degree rather than categorical absence.
Allan, Rutger, The Middle Voice in Ancient Greek A Study of Polysemy, 2003supporting
verbs denoting manner of motion inherently involve a lower degree of subject-affectedness than the other verbs of body motion. Since these verbs focus on the manner in which the change of location takes place, the element of change undergone by the subject is backgrounded.
Allan links the preponderance of active forms among manner-of-motion verbs to their lower inherent subject affectedness, connecting the concept to telicity and the backgrounding of internal change.
Allan, Rutger, The Middle Voice in Ancient Greek A Study of Polysemy, 2003supporting
Lyons uses the verb affect in a sense that is broad enough to be applicable to all middle meanings. It is this broad sense of affect and affectedness that we need in an adequate definition of middle meaning.
Allan credits Lyons's broad formulation of 'affectedness' as the theoretical precedent that allows subject affectedness to span both passive and indirect-reflexive poles of middle meaning.
Allan, Rutger, The Middle Voice in Ancient Greek A Study of Polysemy, 2003supporting
both verbs imply subject-affectedness, and the active inflection is neutral with respect to subject-affectedness.
In the πολιτεύω/πολιτεύομαι case, Allan confirms scenario (iii)—redundant middle marking—where both forms equally imply subject affectedness and the active's neutrality explains its occasional appearance.
Allan, Rutger, The Middle Voice in Ancient Greek A Study of Polysemy, 2003supporting
δέομαι (+ gen. + gen.) 'beg s. th. of s. o.' is a semantic extension of the original meaning 'lack, need, want', which pertains purely to a passive emotional or physical affectedness.
Allan traces the middle verb δέομαι to a core meaning of passive emotional and physical affectedness, illustrating how subject affectedness can motivate the diachronic extension of middle usage.
Allan, Rutger, The Middle Voice in Ancient Greek A Study of Polysemy, 2003supporting
These semantic features all relate to the subject of the clause.
Allan's semantic feature analysis of middle uses is organized entirely around properties of the subject, establishing subject affectedness as the superordinate axis for classifying distinct middle categories.
Allan, Rutger, The Middle Voice in Ancient Greek A Study of Polysemy, 2003aside