Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

B-Haverim,

there's a principle of economy at work in stylistics/pragmatics we can call
over-specification.  i think i can fairly summarize the idea: what is
longer than necessary is marked.  for example, imagine the following items
in the middle of a paragraph recounting the assassination of Lincoln:

a.  he shot him
b.  Booth shot Lincoln
c.  John Wilkes Booth, the deranged thespian, shot Abraham Lincoln,
sixteenth President of the United States of America

in an effort to get at the intentions of a speaker/writer, it is (c) that
is marked for us.  (a) presumes the participants are merely being tracked. 
(b) avoids a possible mis-reading by specifying the participants more
specifically than (a) but still economically.  the over-specification of
the participants in (c) elevates the proposition to the status of "central
to the speaker/writer's purpose."

it seems to me that the Hebrew writer's stylistic/pragmatic sensibilities
are a little different than ours in that he may use *under*-specification
as well as over-specification as a marking device.  Over and
under-specification are both used in  Exodus 2:21-25

 21 And Moses was content to dwell with the man: and he gave Moses Zipporah
his daughter.
 22 And she bare him a son, and he called his name Gershom: for he said, I
have been a stranger in a strange land.
 23 And it came to pass in process of time, that the king of Egypt died:
and the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage, and they cried,
and their cry came up unto God by reason of the bondage.
 24 And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with
Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.
 25 And God looked upon the children of Israel, and God had respect unto
them.

I think v. 21b grates a bit against our sensibilities in terms of
participant tracking.  in Hebrew mo$eh is at the end of the sentence and
determining the subject of wayyitten requires a little extra work on the
part of the reader.  the reader must read the entire sentence and figure
out the subject cannot be mo$eh and so *must* be the only other 3ms
participant available and logical: re`u'el.  we English speaker/writers
usually try to make things easier on our readers and would probably choose
a proper noun reference to re`u'el as in Lincoln example (b) above.  In
that 21b requires this extra work on the part of the reader, in a sense,
risks a (temporary) mis-reading, i would say it uses under-specification to
demote re`u'el to the status of prop in this passage.  similarly, v. 22
under-specifies tsipporah and mo$eh.

in contrast to the under-specification exhibited in vv. 21-22, vv. 24-25
over-specifies 'elohim.  even the wayyiqtol of v. 24a, the first of a
series of four wayyiqtols, would not require a specification of 'elohim any
more than those in 21b or 22; nevertheless, the specification in 24a is
convenient for the reader as an aid in participant tracking.  In addition,
the remaining wayyiqtols in the series all specify, pleonastically, 'elohim
as subject.  in this way the narrator elevates 'elohim to the status of
"central to the purposes of the narrator."  we can actually rank the
participants in the narrative by their relative centrality:

low: re`u'el, tsipporah
middle: mo$eh
high: 'elohim

we now have linguistic grounds for the claim that the narrator intends to
give 'elohim the greatest share of glory for His providential care of Moses
and Israel, Moses the second, and Reuel, some leftovers.

it seems to me that BH has a dynamic in participant reference tracking that
we shun in English: a functional under-specification.  what do you think? 
can you refer me to helpful literature on the matter?

Shalom,
Bryan


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

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