From: Rolf Furuli (furuli@online.no)
Date: Sat Jan 03 1998 - 13:16:00 EST
<<<<<<At 4:20 AM -0600 1/2/98, Wes Williams wrote:
>Dear Carl and Rolf,
>
>I had no idea that the issue of qualitativeness would become so nuanced.
>It really
>doesn't seem to be that complex to me. I'm second-guessing a previous
>statement I
>made, however, and wanted to bounce it off some that I trust will be honest
>(that's YOU). I sense that this question will not die a slow death and I am
>thinking ahead to see what the next issue will be.
>
>I'm second guessing the statement that 'a count noun is either definite or
>indefinite with varying degrees of qualitativeness added depending on
>context'.
>What about the case where metaphor is involved? Where the subject is
>clearly not a
>part of the _literal_ group? For example:
>
>"He is a pig"
>
>(Rolf, forgive me if you've dealt with this question before, but I just
>lost my
>entire archives when I upgraded to IE 4.0. I hate computers although I make my
>living from them. Was this the same point you earlier made when you shared
>"The
>moon was a sun."?)
>
>The man clearly does not belong to the "pig" class, but we here attribute
>characteristics of a pig to the man. However, as soon as we argue for
>qualitativeness, we argue for the existence of a class "Pig."
>
>Now the issue of whether or not "pig" is indefinite. I wrestle with two
>possibilities:
>1) Metaphor is somehow not a legitimate linguistic category to posit
>definiteness/
>indefiniteness? or,
>2) The man is part of a class of "Man" who have the characteristics of class
>"Pig," or,
>3) This is an example of a qualitative-only linguistic construct. But I
>think it
>can only be true with metaphor.
>
>I think (2) but am quite open to (3). I have no knowledge of (1).
>
>Thanks,
>Wes
>
>P.S. Carl, I entirely agree with your analysis of Luke 20:38. The point
>was what
>kind of God that God is, even though it is true that v.37 God is definite. I
>further appreciate your mature view on the formulation of rules.
>
>Rolf, thanks for your points about distinctions between adjectives and
>substantives.
(1) Let me say in the first place that my note the other day was, for me
personally, a realization and confession that I no longer see the cogency
of some of what's been argued about QEOS in John 1:1c. I think that Rolf's
distinction between what's morphological, what's contextual, and what's
lexical in the way any particular predicate word functions is helpful, but
I also think that the syntactical 'rules' should be understood as science
understands 'laws' of nature: namely, as generally/commonly but not
universally or absolutely observed behavioral tendencies.
(2) I'm inclined to agree with your #2 above; I would only add that I
rather suspect that, if we are honest about linguistic usage, we may have
to say that adjectives are (in Greek, at least) nouns that have become
metaphorical (and perhaps have assumed morphological appendages indicating
just that) as having reference to more than the concrete individual(s) to
which they may once have referred. Please note (for Rolf's sake): I'm NOT a
linguist, and out of ignorance I may say some stupid things about language.
To a child the word 'dog' functions as a proper name for his pet, but
sooner or later he comes to realize that there are creatures sufficiently
similar to his pet that he can use that word 'dog' to refer to them also.
As he grows older he may even come to learn that there's a distinct
biological species of 'canis canis' of which every specimen is a member,
but in terms of the development of his use of language, he's progressed
from usage of 'dog' from a concrete individual to a concrete universal by
way of metaphor (methinks). Does that make sense?
(3) One or both of you may know something about this: Latin. Last spring a
colleague and I were trying to thrash out the way the subjunctive is used
in some Latin EST QUI ... clauses while an indicative is used with others
(where EST is existential). I think we'd want to say that when the
subordinate verb is indicative, the relative clause is adjectival and
concretely descriptive:
EST QUI SEMPER 'LUPUM' CLAMAT "He's the one who always cries 'wolf.'"
But when the subordinate verb is subjunctive, the clause describes the
characteristic behavior of a class to which the individual named in the
main clause belongs:
EST QUI SEMPER 'LUPUM' CLAMET "He's the kind of guy who always cries
'wolf.'"
Is this phenomenon related to the question above or not?>>>>>>
Wes,
I also agree with your #2 above, but from another point of view we could
also apply #1. I enclose an excerpt from a comment I sent you some time ago
about the same question (that which you lost):
In your examples about peaches and pigs you yourself have pointed to a
harmonization with my claims above by using the word "metaphorical". This
is neither a lexical nor a grammatical/syntactical category, but a
pragmatic one. To call a human being a pig is contrafactual, and the only
reason why it is accepted, is a CONVENTION we learn that the use of this
word ascribes certain qualities to the person. Because metaphorical use is
based on convention it is completely irrelevant to the question whether the
occurrence of a predicate nominative before the verb makes it exclusively
qualitative or not. This must be demonstrated by syntactical examples and
not by either lexical or pragmatic ones. As long as we don`t argue this
way, Dixon and his friends have the upper hand.
Carl,
I heartily agree with your words above: "I also think that the syntactical
'rules' should be understood as science understands 'laws' of nature:
namely, as generally/commonly but not universally or absolutely observed
behavioral tendencies."
I think your latin clauses exellently illustrates how nuances similar to
those we are discussing in John 1:1 were expressed. We may discuss the
meaning of Latin subjunctive, but the contrast between the two relative
clauses may be a little easier to ascertain than the meaning of the PN in
John 1:1 because the Latin difference is morphological while the Greek is
syntactical, and at the outset we cannot even be sure that the Greek word
order has any great semantic meaning. For persons knowing some Latin, your
example would be very good as an illustration of the problems of John 1:1.
Regards
Rolf
Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo
furuli@online.no
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