The GT-Stem in Ugaritic and the Middle Voice Semantic Domain

The traditional definition of the Gt-stem in Ugaritic in terms of detransitive or reflexive functions does not give justice to its actual functional scope. The Gt-stem is a self-benefactive affectedness pat-tern that promotes an animate Agent to the syntactic position of subject; Gt verbs are as a rule dynamic, agentive and transitive. The stem functions differently in the poetic and prosaic registers of the language. The main functions of the stem are autobenefactive, direct reflexive, indirect reflexive, reciprocal and denominative. The auto-benefactive is proportionally distributed in the two principle registers; the direct reflexive, indirect reflexive, reciprocal and denominative are exclusively poetic usages. The anticausative or resultant interpretations (which occurs very rarely and only in sentences with an inanimate subject) are found in prose. Altogether, in spite of its basically conservative character, Ugaritic provides interesting indications of the development by which the Gt-stem enriched its middle voice semantics.