Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Bryan Rocine" <596547 AT ican.net>]

Hi Peter,

Sure, I'll have a go at your question( btw, I appreciate your asking it),
but let me put the answer into a little perspective.  We're just talkin'. 
There are experts on this list, one of which I am *not*.  I usually
participate on this list as much as I do because I am anxious for their
feedback, come what may.   :-)

My view:  The historical texts(i.e., Gen- Kings with the standard
exceptions) are described as an interplay between register and discourse
genre.  you'll no doubt see the influence of Niccacci/Schneider and
Longacre in the following.

in my view there are two registers: literary and oral. in the corpus, we
see the literary attested primarily "outside the quotation marks"; that is,
outside the boundaries of direct speech.  it is the more formal,
pragmatically constrained of the two registers.   the oral is
generally(i.e., not always) identical with direct speech in the historical
texts.

then there are a handful of discourse genres. the short list includes
Historical Narrative, Predictive Narrative, Instructional Discourse,
Hortatory Discourse, Procedural Discourse, Expository Discourse.

to begin relating register and genre we observe that the literary register
utilizes Historical Narrative, Procedural, Expository, but *not*
Predictive, Instructional , or Hortatory.  The absence of Predictive,
Instructional, and Hortatory in the literary register is due to the nature
of the registers.  in addition to relative formality, register accounts for
the situational relationship between the writer/speaker and audience.  In
the literary register, the writer addresses the less specified audience
from the professional, detached, special position of a chronicler.  in the
oral register a speaker/writer with a wide variety of purposes addresses a
more limited audience about matters of immediate concern to that audience. 
the oral register probably may utilize all the genres, but  in the corpus,
i have yet to find a Procedural Discourse in the oral register. 
overwhelmingly preponderant in the oral register are the three genres which
are dedicated to it: Predictive, Instructional, and Hortatory.

in addition,  those genres that appear in both literary and oral registers
have different features.  For instance, Historical Narrative in the
literary register will not use a clause-initial qatal, but Historical
Narrative in the oral register will.

Summary of distribution:

                  literary     oral
Hist. Narr.       X          X
Procedural      X       
Expository      X          X
Predictive                   X
Instructional               X
Hortatory                    X



I hope this very brief outline isn't trite or so brief it is worthless.  it
would be fun to discuss any part of it.

----------
> From: Peter_Kirk AT sil.org
> To: Biblical Hebrew <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
> Subject: Re[2]: 1 sam 1, subchain proposal
> Date: Monday, November 30, 1998 10:00 PM
> 
> 
> Well, of course the Hebrew Bible is full of expository and procedural 
> discourse embedded in historical narrative - it's called direct 
> speech. How does your idea tie up with that?
> 
> Peter Kirk
> 

B. M. Rocine
Associate Pastor
Living Word Church
6101 Court St. Rd.
Syracuse, NY 13208

315-437-6744(w)
315-479-8267(h)