Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

>>
>> I've plugged this before, but I would strongly suggest you look at the
>>beginning
>> grammar that Bryan pulled together, written from a discourse analysis
>>viewpoint.
>> Admittedly, it *is* a beginning grammar, which means there is a lot of
>>very basic
>> material (aleph-beth, conjugations, etc.).  But Bryan has done an
>>admirable job
>> reducing the discourse analysis model for biblical Hebrew into a form 
>> easily
>> comprehended.  It is simplified to some degree (one does not want to
>>discourage
>> beginning students!), so it does not address all the tough issues.  But
>>through it, I
>> feel sure you will see that discourse analysis does indeed take into
>>consideration
>> clause-level analysis.
>
>I have it, and was prepared to use it for some Hebrew classes here.
>I understand that discourse does take clause-level into
>consideration, that's not my point.  My point is that the discourse
>approaches I've seen tend to assume certain things about the
>clause level that aren't necessarily established, or that at least
>need to be questioned.  The basic question I'm asking is, which
>should come first?  Can discourse analysis provide a truly unified
>syntax (and an autonomous syntax) of the clause level?  If so I'd
>like to see it presented as a prologue to discourse analysis.  If not,
>how does it establish a clause-level basis from which to proceed
>(or does it feel the need to)?  What approach is used to set up the
>clause-level syntax?  To me as a clause-level grammarian, it's a
>little like starting a mystery novel in the middle.

Dave Washburn


Dear Dave,


I agree in every word you wrote! There is a lot of circularity in discourse
analysis. Bryan's work is very fine, he has a deep knowledge of Hebrew, and
his posts on the list reveal that he works hard with the language and is
open to ideas. But we must take an analysis above the sentence level for
what it is, namely, a means to reveal patterns in the language, and one
factor together with many others that can help us find the nuances of our
text.

I would, however, turn the table and claim that neither the clause level
nor discourse level is what counts most, but rather the word level. ( I
speak both from the point of view of understanding the grammar of Hebrew
and of translating the text.) The modern dictum, which in my mind is a
greater fallacy than even "the etymological fallacy"  (the view that the
etymological meaning of a word is somehow reflected in all its uses), is
the following: "A word does not have meaning without a context, only a
potential for meaning." This view overlooks or discards one of the most
fundamental principles in translation theory, and I suspect it is
responsible for the popularity of discourse analysis at the expense of word
analysis or clause analysis.

Writing a text is communication, and to understand the message (as I see
it), the first and most important step is to analyse its *words*, at the
same time accounting for the concept and reference of each word. The next
step is to analyse how the combination of different words in a phrase or
clause play together, not to generate new meaning which the context does
not do, but to learn how the author, by the combination of words, signals
to the receptor which part of the concept behind each word that is made
visible. The third step is to do discourse analysis, but this is primarily
a control of the judgements made in the two previous steps, the only extra
information I expect by this third step is about what are the theme/rheme
combinations and which part of the *sentence* is emphasized, if any.



Reagards

Rolf


Rolf Furuli
Lecturer in Semitic languages
University of Oslo