John 2:6: attributive or predicate participles?

[Stephen Hughes]

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.

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 original 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.

I'm sorry to say to say that I don't think your question has been answered here. The assumption; "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." itself needs to be valid for the matter to be settled. That is to say, "Is the English gerund equivalent to the Greek participle?".

That is really not an easy question to answer. At a most general level, we need to proceed with extreme caution when assuming any equivalences. At a first practical level, there is formal grammar as you have described and the usage of the majority of the population:

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.

Many native speakers of English mix up,

1. The six girls that I saw in the park, were singing.
2. The six girls, who I saw in the park were singing.
3. The six girls, whom I saw in the park were singing.
4. The six girls, what I seen in the park was/were singing.(restricted to some dialects)

Only those speakers who have developed a distinct meaning for two (or more) of those and who use them (regularly) in the same context could be suspected of using them as a pair as you describe.

But then you could consider more widely variations like,

• "Six of the girls that/who/whom I saw singing were in the park."
• "Six of the girls that/who/whom I saw in the park were singing."

An apparent coincidence of forms between Greek and English only makes sense if we limit our looking at English to that form without allowing the language its flexibility.

The embarrassing fact is that no one (in our present age) has sufficient command of Koine Greek - and expecially participles - to be able to explain nuances, and variations in nuances like what you are inviting us to discuss here.

Your general line of inquiry is a good one, but if you limit it too much to a question of how does a Greek participle relate to a certain syntactic variation of the English relative clause, then we are going to lose sight of the bigger picture of Greek participles that will give meaning to the instance that we are considering here.

Do you know of any other instances where you have faced the same difficulty distinguishing between attributive and predicate participles? Is this something that occurred to you here for the first time, or an on-going problem that decided to get resolved now.

[moon jung]

Many native speakers of English mix up,
1.The six girls that I saw in the park, were singing.
2.The six girls, who I saw in the park were singing.
3.The six girls, whom I saw in the park were singing.
4.The six girls, what I seen in the park was/were singing.(restricted to some dialects)
Only those speakers who have developed a distinct meaning for two (or more) of those and who use them (regularly) in the same context could be suspected of using them as a pair as you describe.

But then you could consider more widely variations like,
(5) •"Six of the girls that/who/whom I saw singing were in the park."
(6) •"Six of the girls that/who/whom I saw in the park were singing."

Stephen, do you mean that native English speakers may have in mind one of the six sentences above [depending on the context], when they say " I saw six girls singing in the park" ?

Moon Jung

[Bruce McKinnon]

Many native speakers of English mix up,
1.The six girls that I saw in the park, were singing.
2.The six girls, who I saw in the park were singing.
3.The six girls, whom I saw in the park were singing.
4.The six girls, what I seen in the park was/were singing.(restricted to some dialects)
Only those speakers who have developed a distinct meaning for two (or more) of those and who use them (regularly) in the same context could be suspected of using them as a pair as you describe.

But then you could consider more widely variations like,
(5) •"Six of the girls that/who/whom I saw singing were in the park."
(6) •"Six of the girls that/who/whom I saw in the park were singing."

Stephen, do you mean that native English speakers may have in mind one of the six sentences above [depending on the context], when they say " I saw six girls singing in the park" ?

Moon Jung

To my mind, the simple answer to your question is yes.

[Stephen Hughes]

To my mind, the simple answer to your question is yes.

Ditto.

[moon jung]

Many native speakers of English mix up,
1.The six girls that I saw in the park, were singing.
2.The six girls, who I saw in the park were singing.
3.The six girls, whom I saw in the park were singing.
4.The six girls, what I seen in the park was/were singing.(restricted to some dialects)
Only those speakers who have developed a distinct meaning for two (or more) of those and who use them (regularly) in the same context could be suspected of using them as a pair as you describe.

But then you could consider more widely variations like,
(5) •"Six of the girls that/who/whom I saw singing were in the park."
(6) •"Six of the girls that/who/whom I saw in the park were singing."

Stephen, do you mean that native English speakers may have in mind one of the six sentences above [depending on the context], when they say " I saw six girls singing in the park" ?

Moon Jung

To my mind, the simple answer to your question is yes.

OK. Let us ignore the ambiguity about what verb the prepositional phrase "in the park" goes with, "saw" or "singing".
Just assume that it goes with "singing". Then I am interested in the following question:

Does the speaker talk primarily about his seeing the EVENT where six girls were singing, or about his seeing the SIX GIRLS who were singing?

Moon Jung

[Stephen Hughes]

OK. Let us ignore the ambiguity about what verb the prepositional phrase "in the park" goes with, "saw" or "singing".
Just assume that it goes with "singing". Then I am interested in the following question:

Does the speaker talk primarily about his seeing the EVENT where six girls were singing, or about his seeing the SIX GIRLS who were singing?

Jung, there is an inherent problem with the sentence, "I saw six girls singing in the park", because it confuses the senses.

Compare it with; "I saw six girls dancing in the park." or "I heard six girls singing in the park".

Another thing is the intensity of the action.

Compare it with; "I observed six girls dancing in the park." or "I listened to six girls singing in the park."

I think because of the synaesthesia, "I saw six girls singing in the park" has to be the event, in the same way, "I heard six girls dancing in the park." would do so too. If it were, "I heard six girls singing in the park", then that might suggest he heard the girl's voices coming out in song. And so too for seeing their shape moving in dance in, "I saw six girls dancing in the park."

With a more specific verb like "ogled", the observer wouldn't be particularly concerned what they were doing.

In the case when they were frolicking with gaiety, both singing and dancing, perhaps the choice of the verb (dealing with which sense; sight or hearing), would determine what was considered the event; "I heard six girls singing and dancing in the park." then maybe dancing is the event and singing is the action that happens in the context of the dancing and vice versa for the verb "to see". "I saw six girls singing and dancing in the park." The girls singing is the event, and the dancing is what they are doing that he is interested in,

[Barry Hofstetter]

There is nothing at all ambiguous about the sentence "I saw six girls singing in the park." No native English speaker hears this as in any way ambiguous. I saw six girls. What were they doing? Singing in the park. Where were you when you saw them? Duh, I was in the park...

Now, I think this has gone on long enough. We need to be talking about Greek, people. I'll give it another full day, and then I"m locking the topic.

[Stephen Hughes]

There is nothing at all ambiguous about the sentence "I saw six girls singing in the park." No native English speaker hears this as in any way ambiguous. I saw six girls. What were they doing? Singing in the park. Where were you when you saw them? Duh, I was in the park...

Now, I think this has gone on long enough. We need to be talking about Greek, people. I'll give it another full day, and then I"m locking the topic.

While it might not be ambiguous, it is never-the-less open to interpretation. There are a number of different sentence stress and intonation patterns which we could use when reading / saying that sentence. At the heart of it, I think Jung is wondering which one best represents the force of the participle in Greek.

Learning to understand, the language which is the medium for learning Greek is often as difficult for students from a non-English speaking background as learning Greek is. Most of the best Middle Egyptian grammars are in German, and reading the German - when a high level of exactitude was needed - was at first as much of a challenge for me as the acquiring the language was.

Jung, I more or less agree with Barry. In my experience it is not good to get stuck on one little point like this. I think that we need to find syntactic parallels in Greek and discuss them together. A conspectus of various examples will allow us to see more clearly what we are dealing with.

[Bruce McKinnon]

There is nothing at all ambiguous about the sentence "I saw six girls singing in the park." No native English speaker hears this as in any way ambiguous. I saw six girls. What were they doing? Singing in the park. Where were you when you saw them? Duh, I was in the park...

Now, I think this has gone on long enough. We need to be talking about Greek, people. I'll give it another full day, and then I"m locking the topic.

I agree.

[moon jung]

There is nothing at all ambiguous about the sentence "I saw six girls singing in the park." No native English speaker hears this as in any way ambiguous. I saw six girls. What were they doing? Singing in the park. Where were you when you saw them? Duh, I was in the park...

Now, I think this has gone on long enough. We need to be talking about Greek, people. I'll give it another full day, and then I"m locking the topic.

This thread is about John 2:6. As far as I see, English participles, though their use is quite limited compared to the Greek one, shares the essential property with the Greek. I thought the judgement about English participles may be applied to
Greek.

Barry, do you mean that English speakers do not have any intention to use
the participle "singing" either in an attributive sense or in a predicative sense?
If taken attributive, the sentence would mean that I saw six girls who are singing, in contrast to contextually relevant girls, e.g. those who do other activities. If taken
predicative, the speaker charactersizes six girls as singing without intention to distinguish them from other possible entities. I feel I need to abandon the habit of thinking whether a particular participle is attributive or predicative which I learned from the standard grammars, IN THE CASE OF indefinite nouns + non-articular participles.

Thanks for engagement with me, with this little digression. I learned quite a bit.
Moon Jung.