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b-hebrew - Re[2]: Re 1 Sam 1, Peter Kirk

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  • From: Peter_Kirk AT sil.org
  • To: 596547 AT ican.net, b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: Re[2]: Re 1 Sam 1, Peter Kirk
  • Date: Tue, 01 Dec 1998 21:36 -0500 (EST)


Dear Bryan,

Thanks for your useful comments.

One area where I am unclear about is the distinction between
procedural and instructional discourse and how this relates to
register. To which register and discourse type would you assign the
detailed instructions (in direct speech) for building the tabernacle
in Exodus 25-28 and the instructions for consecration of priests in
Exodus 29? Longacre (if I'm allowed to mention him! Sorry, Vince! ;-)
), in "Weqatal forms in Biblical Hebrew Prose" (in RD Bergen (ed)
"Biblical Hebrew and Discourse Linguistics", SIL 1994) pp.52-55, takes
the sacrificial prescriptions of Leviticus as the prototype of
procedural discourse - Exodus 29 is very similar - but also describes
Exodus 25:1-30:10 as instructional (would he exclude the slightly
different chapter 29?).

And then what about the detailed accounts of these instructions being
carried out in Exodus 36-39 and Leviticus 8, which in many long
passages differ from the instructions only in the verb forms (e.g.
wayyiqtol in place of weqatal)? Given the similarity, surely they must
be in the same register (if your meaning of "register" includes the
meaning "language variety"). Yet you would apparently assign
instructional discourse to oral register but procedural discourse and
the historical accounts (which are not direct speech) to literary
register.

Have I understood you correctly? You could be consistent if you define
all of Exodus 25-29 as procedural, but then you disagree with
Longacre! Have I missed something? Is there a formal distinction
between procedural and instructional discourse, or only a pragmatic
one? Could the differences be explained as the same discourse type in
your two different registers?

Peter Kirk

PS. You wrote separately "...i can see it now...
Vince_DeCaen AT sil.org...". You work on his linguistics, and I'll work
on his doctrinal soundness! ;-)




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