John 2:6: attributive or predicate participles?

[MAubrey]

I'm not sure you should be reading Bakker at all.

[cwconrad]

I'm not sure you should be reading Bakker at all.

Are you speaking ex cathedra, Mike?

[moon jung]

I have skimmed over Bakker's book three times. I found it quite satisfying because it gives me some underlying
principles for various ad hoc rules of the Greek definite article. So, if it is questionable whether I should read this
book, it seems to imply that my satisfaction is sort of illusion. If some explanation is given, it will help me.

Moon Jung

[Jonathan Robie]

I am having difficulty understanding what question this thread is about.

In John 2:6, we have

Ησαν δὲ εκιεῖ ὑδρίαι λίθιναι ἓξ κείμεναι κατὰ τὸν καθαρισμὸν τῶν Ιουδαίων,
χωροῦσαι ανὰ μετρητὰς δύο ἠ τρεῖς.

I wonder whether participles κείμεναι and χωροῦσαι are attributive or predicative.
I would take both to be predicative. Any other opinions?

First question: what does κατὰ mean in this context? I'll go with this sense from Abbott-Smith:

according to, after, like: Mk 7:5, Lk 2:27, 29 Jo 7:24 Ro 8:4 14:15, Eph 2:2, Col 2:8, Ja 2:8

So the verse tells us:

• Ησαν δὲ εκιεῖ ὑδρίαι λίθιναι ἓξ κείμεναι - six stone water jars were set there
• κατὰ τὸν καθαρισμὸν τῶν Ιουδαίων - in accordance with the ceremonial cleansing of the Jews
• χωροῦσαι ανὰ μετρητὰς δύο ἠ τρεῖς - each holding two or three measures

What ambiguity are you trying to resolve?

[Stephen Carlson]

According to the scheme of Bakker, participles of John 2:6 does not belong to the "predicative use", but to the "referent modifiers".

You should be aware that Bakker's scheme is incomplete at a crucial point. On page 250, she states that "predicative modifiers ... fall outside the scope of my research since they do not (only) modify the head of the NP and are therefore no constituents of the NP proper." So also pp. 4 and 118. Her particular understanding of "predicative" as being a predicate of a copular verb or an adjunct of state (e.g., p. 217) is what leads her to reject the traditional attributive vs. predicate position analysis. So, you still have to determine whether the participles of John 2:6 are part of the NP or not, but deciding whether they are "reference modifiers" or "referent modifiers."

It's a little frustrating to me that Bakker discusses the traditional grammatical analysis in terms of "predicative" while the terminology of Smyth is actually "predicate." Such minor terminological differences would not be so bothersome to me except that it is not entirely clear that Smyth means the same by "predicate" as how she understands "predicative." Part of the problem is that Smyth isn't entirely clear either (see §§ 1168-71). At any rate, problems with the application of her understanding of predicative led to her to propose a distinction between "reference modifiers" and "referent modifiers." I don't think this is really going to be useful to the analysis of John 2:8 however.

[moon jung]

Stephen Carlson wrote: Her particular understanding of "predicative" as being a predicate of a copular verb or an adjunct of state (e.g., p. 217) is what leads her to reject the traditional attributive vs. predicate position analysis. So, you still have to determine whether the participles of John 2:6 are part of the NP or not, but deciding whether they are "reference modifiers" or "referent modifiers."

Thank you, Stephen, for the succint summary of Bakker's thesis, and the problem with my attempt to apply it to John 2:6.

(1) I thought about the thesis of Bakker further. Let me quote her again:

For modifiers [ e.g. adjective, adverb, genitive, numeral, participle, possesive, prepositional phrase, relative clause]
, I argued that **their articulation does not, as is traditionally assumed, depend on their attributive or predicative value, but
on their functions. Modifiers are articular if they SPECIFY THE REFERENCE, i.e. if they clarify WHICH referent is referred to by providing information that distinguishes the intended referent FROM OTHER possible entities satisfying the description
of the noun. Non-articular modifiers, on the other hand, do not specify the reference, but CHARACTERIZE THE REFERENT. They provide descriptive information on the REFERENT WITHOUT the purpose of DISTINGUISHING
this referent FROM OTHER ENTITIES.

** [The article in front of the relative clause which modifies a preceding noun is assumed to be dropped. So is article in front of the noun modified by the pre-nominal relative clause; so the relative clause does not mark the "reference specification" and "referent characterzation" syntactically. ]

For adjectives, numerals and some participles the opposition "reference specification vs. referent characterization" has turned out to be inappropriate. For although articular adjectives, numerals and participles are genuine reference modifiers,
their nonb-articular counterparts (in single modifier NPs at least) are predicative elements instead of referent modifiers.
Yet, even though these predicative modifers do not express a feature but a temporary state of the referent, they still provide information on the REFERENT rather than the REFERENCE. For that reason, I have argued that REFERENT CHARACTERIZATION is the basic characterization of all non-articular modifers.

(1) So, the basic distinction between articular expressions and non-articular expression is "reference specification"
versus "referent characterization". Both articular and non-articular modifers can be part of the NP, or
the expression with "referent charaterization" can be used as predicate of the referent. For this, see (3) below.


(2) Bakker rejects the traditional concept of the "attributive vs. predicate position" because
among the constituents that are in the "predicate position", only adjectives, numerals, and some participles
have a predicative value, while, in the other cases, those in the "predicate position" are part of the NP.

(3) In the case of participles, anarthrous participles may be part of the NP or has a predicative value. Bakker does not clearly define what is a "predicative value", but mentions "a predicate of a copular verb or an adjunct of state" as examples.
It seems that to her a participle with no preceding article has an "attributive value" or "predicative value"
depending on whether it "expresses a FEATURE or a TEMPORARY STATE of the referent", respectively.

In the case of John 2:6, both participles do not describe a "temporay state" of the λίθιναι ὑδρίαι ἓξ, but a feature" of it.
So, we can say that each participle is part of the NP whose head is λίθιναι ὑδρίαι ἓξ.

That was my reasoning in my previous post.

Jonathan Robie wrote:
So the verse tells us:

• Ησαν δὲ εκιεῖ ὑδρίαι λίθιναι ἓξ κείμεναι - six stone water jars were set there
• κατὰ τὸν καθαρισμὸν τῶν Ιουδαίων - in accordance with the ceremonial cleansing of the Jews
• χωροῦσαι ανὰ μετρητὰς δύο ἠ τρεῖς - each holding two or three measures

What ambiguity are you trying to resolve

Jonathan, you take the first participle as part of periphrastic construction. That reads smoother to me.
In this rendering, the issue is whether χωροῦσαι ανὰ μετρητὰς δύο ἠ τρεῖς helps SPECIFY the referent of ὑδρίαι λίθιναι ἓξ
or further CHARACTERIZES the already specified referent of ὑδρίαι λίθιναι ἓξ.

Moon Jung

[Jonathan Robie]

So the verse tells us:

• Ησαν δὲ εκιεῖ ὑδρίαι λίθιναι ἓξ κείμεναι - six stone water jars were set there
• κατὰ τὸν καθαρισμὸν τῶν Ιουδαίων - in accordance with the ceremonial cleansing of the Jews
• χωροῦσαι ανὰ μετρητὰς δύο ἠ τρεῖς - each holding two or three measures

What ambiguity are you trying to resolve

Jonathan, you take the first participle as part of periphrastic construction. That reads smoother to me. In this rendering, the issue is whether χωροῦσαι ανὰ μετρητὰς δύο ἠ τρεῖς helps SPECIFY the referent of ὑδρίαι λίθιναι ἓξ
or further CHARACTERIZES the already specified referent of ὑδρίαι λίθιναι ἓξ.

How would this distinction change the meaning of the passage? Would the information content be any different either way?

In other words, is the ambiguity in the interpretation of the text or in the model you are using to interpret the text?

[moon jung]

So the verse tells us:

• Ησαν δὲ εκιεῖ ὑδρίαι λίθιναι ἓξ κείμεναι - six stone water jars were set there
• κατὰ τὸν καθαρισμὸν τῶν Ιουδαίων - in accordance with the ceremonial cleansing of the Jews
• χωροῦσαι ανὰ μετρητὰς δύο ἠ τρεῖς - each holding two or three measures

What ambiguity are you trying to resolve

Jonathan, you take the first participle as part of periphrastic construction. That reads smoother to me. In this rendering, the issue is whether χωροῦσαι ανὰ μετρητὰς δύο ἠ τρεῖς helps SPECIFY the referent of ὑδρίαι λίθιναι ἓξ
or further CHARACTERIZES the already specified referent of ὑδρίαι λίθιναι ἓξ.

How would this distinction change the meaning of the passage? Would the information content be any different either way?

In other words, is the ambiguity in the interpretation of the text or in the model you are using to interpret the text?

The ambiguity seems to be in the text. In the house there might have been other stone water pots used for other purposes and having different capacities. But the most plausible interpretation is to assume that there were no other water pots other than "six stone water pots" in the house, and the writer did not intend to distinguish the "stone water pots" which satisfy the conditions of both participles from other ones which do not. By the way, it seems that an English sentence "I saw six girls singing in the park" has a similar ambiguity.

Moon Jung

[Stephen Carlson]

The ambiguity seems to be in the text. In the house there might have been other stone water pots used for other purposes and having different capacities. But the most plausible interpretation is to assume that there were no other water pots other than "six stone water pots" in the house, and the writer did not intend to distinguish the "stone water pots" which satisfy the conditions of both participles from other ones which do not. By the way, it seems that an English sentence "I saw six girls singing in the park" has a similar ambiguity.

I don't see the ambiguity. There is no (definite) article before ὑδρίαι λίθιναι ἓξ, "stone water pots," or "girls." These substantives are indefinite, and as such they don't imply anything about other entities not matching the description. The sentence "I saw six girls singing in the park" does not say anything about how many boys were singing in the park, how many non-singing girls in the park, or how many singing girls not in the park. I suppose there could be an ambiguity along the lines described here in an article-less language (like Latin), but not in Greek.

[Wes Wood]

But the most plausible interpretation is to assume that there were no other water pots other than "six stone water pots" in the house, and the writer did not intend to distinguish the "stone water pots" which satisfy the conditions of both participles from other ones which do not.

Is it? Looking at your English example, I believe most speakers would not think about who else was in the park when understanding that utterance. This does not mean that they would necessarily assume no else was in the park if they were asked directly about the setting by someone else. This helps me see what you are meaning, though. In the Greek text a contributor to this ambiguity could also be the word "εκιεῖ." It appears from context that this "there" was different from where the head steward was and might limit the scope of the statements to the room they were in and not the whole house.