Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Hi Kirk,  good to have you back.
----------
> From: Kirk Lowery <KirkLowery AT xc.org>
> To: Biblical Hebrew <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
> Subject: Re: 1 sam 1, subchain proposal
> Date: Wednesday, December 02, 1998 10:52 AM
> 
> Bryan Rocine wrote:
> 
> > a friend wrote off-list
> > that he didn't see any great descriptive power to seeing some
off-the-line
> > constructions in historical narrative as mainlines within embedded
> > discourses or, as suggested by our friend Vince, as sub-mainlines.
> 
> Just a general comment on discourse theory: Longacre's theory of
narrative
> discourse uses the metaphor or a drama or play to describe grammatical
elements
> at the text-level.
> 
> While his whole idea of plot development (which is straight out of
literary
> criticism) for forgrounded/on-line clauses was heuristically very
powerful, the

yeah, Longacre is quasi-literary criticism.  that's why i call the approach
discourse analysis instead of the more technical text-grammar.  and that's
why his ideas, though we may refine them, are here to stay, IMO.  all the
world's a stage  ;-)  the safety is in the simple pragmatic parameters that
define the genres and their profiles, ala _The Grammar of Discourse_ or
Dawson.  i'm all for making his ideas more linguistically accountable, but
i just don't think rigorous linguistics will make his best stuff go away. 
and it's so much fun!  to do discourse analysis, that is.

> "off-line" concepts didn't have the same power that plot development has
had for
> on-line clauses. I'm not surprised that your friend didn't see
> "background/off-line" as useful. Historically, background started out as
a
> "garbage can category" only negatively defined: "not foreground."
> 
> I presently group clauses in narratives into three notional categories:
> foreground, direct speech, "background." Direct speech is important for
telling
> the reader the motivations and characteristics of the actors. What's left
is
> often clauses which set the time and space dimensions of the succeeding
scenes
> and episodes as the plot moves forward. It's still a garbage can category
(but
> much smaller! :-)

i like it.  it's about what i do.  i put embedded direct speech fairly
highly ranked into Longacre's verb rank cline(which i call a discourse
profile scheme instead).  i do think we have a little more definition in
the off-line stuff than you suggest.  we have the X-qatal as an expression
of simultanaity, the progressive participle, the expository verbless
clause, and  the embedded procedural(weqatal/X-yiqtol) to name a few
distinctions in the off-the-line stuff.

> 
> As for procedural (and other types) of discourse (a la Longacre), we need
a lot
> more analysis of those text types--just like we've focused on narrative
these
> past 15 years--before we can describe the syntax of "mainline,
non-mainline"
> clauses in the text. And of course, we can't assume that there is even an
> analogous mainline/non-mainline distinction in those other genres
(although the
> probably is high that there is *something*.)

especially expository discourse.  and i think the place to go for that is
poetry--yes!  finally!--it's o.k. to read poetry!  ;-)    and, yeah, you're
right about the other genres, too--oh that modality problem!  i guess the
idea then, is to teach the up-and-coming in such a way that the students
know what they don't know--you know what i mean?--teach them so they are
asking good questions that are friendly to the text as it stands and are
sensitive to the micro-effects of macro-structures.  that's what i'm trying
to do, anyway, get them off to a better kind of start.

Shalom,
Bryan


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

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