Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter_Kirk AT sil.org]

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! ;-)