14 David I. Yoon have a middle form but appear to have an active meaning. Again, this is not the place for a detailed linguistic study on this issue, but it seems agreeable that given the definition of the middle as internal causality, or agent involvement, deponent verbs should be considered to have the full force of the middle voice55. Pennington explains: “The Greek verbal system has a rich and nuanced middle voice capable of communicating any number of actions, attitudes and conditions involving a subject- focused lexical idea” (italics mine)56. But while the “deponent” verb may have the full force of the middle voice in its function, it may not convey the full force of prominence that middle voice-forms have, due to its lack of alternative active and passive voice-forms57. In other words, since the speaker/writer does not have any other voice-form to choose from of the so-called deponent verbs, the middle voice-form may not convey any more prominence than the active voice. 4) Other Markers of Prominence. Westfall notes a number of other potential categories of prominence: case; person and number; word order; conjunctions and particles; markers of attention; temporal, spatial and conceptual deixis; interrogatives; contrast and comparison; semantic emphasis; elaboration and comment; concentration of participants; summaries, conclusions, and central sentences; choice of lexis and representation; patterns and repetition58. While it may seem that any element in a linguistic system may potentially be prominent—one may state every element in a given clause or discourse to be prominent, in which case, then, none of the elements are prominent—what I have identified are a few categories in which prominence may be determined, and these namely related to the Greek verb. B. Levels of Prominence Corresponding to the three aspects in the Greek verbal system, there are three levels of prominence, or grounding, in determining prominence59. They are: a) background, b) foreground, and c) frontground60. Background 55 I think Pennington sufficiently explains how deponent verbs arose, and why we should “set them aside.” Cf. Pennington, “Setting Aside ‘Deponency’,” 181–203. 56 Pennington, “Setting Aside ‘Deponency’,” 190. 57 Cf. Westfall, “Analysis of Prominence,” 81. 58 Westfall, “Analysis of Prominence,” 79–94. 59 Porter, Verbal Aspect, 92–93. 60 Porter, “Prominence,” 53. Reed (Philippians, 105–10) utilizes the terms background, theme, and focus respectively, but I prefer the uniformity of Porter’s terms here. See next paragraph for my explanation on this.