John 2:6: attributive or predicate participles?

[Wes Wood]

Sorry, Stephen, I hit post to quickly to see yours.

[Stephen Hughes]

But the most plausible interpretation is to assume that there were no other water pots other than "six stone water pots" in the house, ...

Rubbish! Please reconsider your views!

Jung, please think realistically. They were human beings the same as we are now. Think about your life.

Did they drink water from time to time? Did they cook with it? Did they wash themselves with water to be physically clean? Did they water their household garden? Did they wash their clothes?

Washing ceremonially is a "luxury" use of water!

I think that an interpretation that is "out of context" with human life is probably a lesser quality one.

I think that the number "six" is not to stop us imagining others, but rather let us limit our thinking to the six that we are relevant to the story.

[Jonathan Robie]

I think Moon is showing real symptoms of being a computer geek who works with formal models. As another computer geek who also works with formal models, I recognize the symptoms ;->

It's important to know some limitations of these models. Let me recommend two old classics:

1. Grice's maxims

Grice was the first to note this ubiquitous feature of language use and also the first to present a philosophical analysis. He begins by noting that conversations are usually to some degree cooperative enterprises. He then formulates the Cooperative Principle: “Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged” (1989, 26).

At a more detailed level, he distinguishes four categories with more specific maxims. The category of Quantity includes two injunctions, one to make your contribution as informative as is required, and the second to make it no more informative than is required. The category of Quality is governed by a supermaxim: “Try to make your contribution one that is true”. The category of Relation has a single maxim, “Be relevant”, while the final category of Manner has a short “super” maxim “Be perspicuous” which has various submaxims (1989, 27).

Perhaps the first thing to note is that conversational maxims often come into conflict. One party to the conversation may be caught between saying something less informative than is desired (violating Quantity) and saying something for which there is insufficient evidence (violating Quality). One example of the application of these principles given by Grice is the following exchange:

• I'm low on gas.
• There is a station around the corner on Main St.

In this situation the sentence B uttered does not logically imply that the station is open. However, the remark is irrelevant unless the station is open, so A can infer from the combination of Manner and Quality that B believes he has good evidence that the station is open. Thus B's utterance conversationally implicates that the station is open. One characteristic of conversational implicatures is that they can be cancelled. Thus if B adds to his remark above, “but I don't know whether it is open” then there is no conversational implicature that the station is open. This contrasts with logical or semantic implications which cannot be cancelled without contradiction.

2. John McCarthy's article on Circumscription

"Three missionaries and three cannibals come to a river. A rowboat that seats two is available. If the cannibals ever outnumber the missionaries on either bank of the river, the missionaries will be eaten. How shall they cross the river"

Obviously the puzzler is expected to devise a strategy of rowing the boat back and forth that gets them all across and avoids the disaster.

The correctness of Amarel's representation is not an ordinary logical consequence of these sentences for two further reasons.

First, nothing has been stated about the properties of boats or even the fact that rowing across the river doesn't change the numbers of missionaries or cannibals or the capacity of the boat. Indeed it hasn't been stated that situations change as a result of action. These facts follow from common sense knowledge, so let us imagine that common sense knowledge, or at least the relevant part of it, is also expressed in first order logic.

The second reason we can't deduce the propriety of Amarel's representation is deeper. Imagine giving someone the problem, and after he puzzles for a while, he suggests going upstream half a mile and crossing on a bridge. "What bridge," you say. "No bridge is mentioned in the statement of the problem." And this dunce replies, "Well, they don't say there isn't a bridge." You look at the English and even at the translation of the English into first order logic, and you must admit that
"they don't say" there is no bridge. So you modify the problem to exclude bridges and pose it again, and the dunce proposes a helicopter, and after you exclude that, he proposes a winged horse or that the others hang onto the outside of the boat while two row.

You now see that while a dunce, he is an inventive dunce. Despairing of getting him to accept the problem in the proper puzzler's spirit, you tell him the solution. To your further annoyance, he attacks your solution on the grounds that the boat might have a leak or lack oars. After you rectify that omission from the statement of the problem, he suggests that a sea monster may swim up the river and may swallow the boat. Again you are frustrated, and you look for a mode of reasoning that will settle his hash once and for all.

In spite of our irritation with the dunce, it would be cheating to put into the statement of the problem that there is no other way to cross the river than using the boat and that nothing can go wrong with the boat. A human doesn't need such an ad hoc narrowing of the problem, and indeed the only watertight way to do it might amount to specifying the Amarel representation in English.

[moon jung]

But the most plausible interpretation is to assume that there were no other water pots other than "six stone water pots" in the house, ...

Rubbish! Please reconsider your views!

Jung, please think realistically. They were human beings the same as we are now. Think about your life.

Did they drink water from time to time? Did they cook with it? Did they wash themselves with water to be physically clean? Did they water their household garden? Did they wash their clothes?

Washing ceremonially is a "luxury" use of water!

I think that an interpretation that is "out of context" with human life is probably a lesser quality one.

I think that the number "six" is not to stop us imagining others, but rather let us limit our thinking to the six that we are relevant to the story.

Yes, you are right. What I wrote does not make sense. But what was in my mind was different from what I actually said.
Let me use the English example "I saw six girls singing in the park" to show what was in my mind.

Do you speak this sentence to mean (1) "I saw six girls that were singing in the park" or
(2) "I saw six girls, who were singing in the park"?

I have difficulty here because my mother tongue expresses the two situations in sentences with
completely different structures. In (2) the speaker somehow refers to or envision "six girls" first, and then characterizes
as singing in the park. In (1) the speaker uses the clause "that were singing in the park" to specify a particular group of six girls. If we take "I saw six girls singing in the park" in the sense of (2), the participle "singing in the park" has
a "predicative" value. If we take the sentence in the sense of (1), the participle has an "attributive" value.
I am bothered by this ambiguous participle^^. Or perhaps the distinction between the "attributive" and the "predicative" participles is foreign to the Greek speaker? I think English native speakers who uses such sentences
as "I saw six girls singing in the park" could help resolve this problem of mine.

Moon Jung

[Jonathan Robie]

Let me use the English example "I saw six girls singing in the park" to show what was in my mind.

Do you speak this sentence to mean (1) "I saw six girls that were singing in the park" or
(2) "I saw six girls, who were singing in the park"?

In English, I think all three sentences have essentially the same information content.

[Stephen Hughes]

I have difficulty here because my mother tongue expresses the two situations in sentences with completely different structures.

Grammar is often a transformation between languages, rather than an impartial / independent analysis of a language. If your language (Korean?) doesn't make a differentiation between two things and Greek does, then you need to make a case by case assessment of what is happening. Good translation is set apart from excellent translation, because instead of asking the question, "How can I say that in Greek?", we ask the question. "How would a native speaker say that in Greek?". That requires a high level of competence in both languages.

I realise you are translating into your language from a language that doesn't make the same distinctions that you are used to, but the methodology is the same. You need to go from idiomatic Greek to idiomatic speech in you native language.

If you can show that Greek does differentiate in the same way as your native language does, then you will have added to our understanding of Greek. If we can not show that, then we at least know that when teaching speakers of your language Greek, there will be a need for an explanation about what to do in this case. Either way, your line of inquiry is good and profitable.

We have already discovered that Greek and English are similar enough that native English speakers have uncritically accepted an equivalence. Modern linguistics is of great value in testing whether uncritical assumptions are really worthy of the acceptance that we have given them.

[Barry Hofstetter]

I have difficulty here because my mother tongue expresses the two situations in sentences with completely different structures.

Grammar is often a transformation between languages, rather than an impartial / independent analysis of a language. If your language (Korean?) doesn't make a differentiation between two things and Greek does, then you need to make a case by case assessment of what is happening. Good translation is set apart from excellent translation, because instead of asking the question, "How can I say that in Greek?", we ask the question. "How would a native speaker say that in Greek?". That requires a high level of competence in both languages.

I realise you are translating into your language from a language that doesn't make the same distinctions that you are used to, but the methodology is the same. You need to go from idiomatic Greek to idiomatic speech in you native language.

If you can show that Greek does differentiate in the same way as your native language does, then you will have added to our understanding of Greek. If we can not show that, then we at least know that when teaching speakers of your language Greek, there will be a need for an explanation about what to do in this case. Either way, your line of inquiry is good and profitable.

We have already discovered that Greek and English are similar enough that native English speakers have uncritically accepted an equivalence. Modern linguistics is of great value in testing whether uncritical assumptions are really worthy of the acceptance that we have given them.

Excellent observations, Stephen. There are ways to accomplish this, even if at some point it means including a footnote to explain in detail what distinctions are being made. By comparison, I use Latin: no definite or indefinite article. How did they get along with out it, and what does it do to the interpretation of John 1:1 in Latin? And yet at the time Latin translations were being made of the Bible, nobody seemed a bit troubled by it.

[moon jung]

Let me use the English example "I saw six girls singing in the park" to show what was in my mind.

Do you speak this sentence to mean (1) "I saw six girls that were singing in the park" or
(2) "I saw six girls, who were singing in the park"?

In English, I think all three sentences have essentially the same information content.

If so, English grammar books that clearly distinguish (1) from (2) are wrong? Acccording to the standard
grammar, the relative clause is "restrictive" in (1).

Moon Jung

[Stephen Carlson]

If so, English grammar books that clearly distinguish (1) from (2) are wrong? Acccording to the standard grammar, the relative clause is "restrictive" in (1).

The distinction between restrictive and non-restrictive is really strong when the referent is definite. It also has some strength for general statements, "I like girls who are beautiful" vs. "I like girls, who are beautiful" (note the use of the comma). When the noun is indefinite and the statement refers to a specific occasion or episode, about the only difference is the pace at which the information is presented to the hearer.

[moon jung]

If so, English grammar books that clearly distinguish (1) from (2) are wrong? Acccording to the standard grammar, the relative clause is "restrictive" in (1).

The distinction between restrictive and non-restrictive is really strong when the referent is definite. It also has some strength for general statements, "I like girls who are beautiful" vs. "I like girls, who are beautiful" (note the use of the comma). When the noun is indefinite and the statement refers to a specific occasion or episode, about the only difference is the pace at which the information is presented to the hearer.

"When the noun is indefinite and the statement refers to a specific occasion or episode, about the only difference is the pace at which the information is presented to the hearer"

=> Thanks. This answers the orginal question of this thread, whether the participles in John 2:6 are attributive or predicative. The distinction between the restrictive clause and the non-restrictive relative clause corresponds
to the distinction between the attributive participle and the predicative participle.

Moon Jung