Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Dave Washburn" <dwashbur AT nyx.net>]

Peter,
> 
> Thank you, Bryan.
> 
> I am concerned about your argument that poetry is a more basic form of 
> the language than prose - if that is what you are saying. I think the 
> opposite is more likely to be true, at least by analogy with other 
> languages e.g. Azerbaijani which I am studying. True, prose styles can 
> be artificial with special conventions not used in normal speech. But 
> also poetry can be very artificial; it can be archaising; and it also 
> be very free e.g. in choosing words for their sound rather than for 
> their strict grammatical suitability. The last point may be why it is 
> actually very difficult to reconstruct the TAM system of Hebrew from 
> poetry - because the poets simply used the verb form which sounded 
> best, regardless of whether it normally had an uncancellable tense or 
> aspect property which contradicted the sense of the poem.

THANK YOU for pointing this out.  I've been wondering about 
Bryan's statements re poetry as well, but haven't had a chance to 
respond.  In every language I've studied, not the least of which is 
English, poetry does its own thing and doesn't give a rip about 
grammaticality.  The word-picture takes precedence and makes its 
own rules.  An excellent treatment of this is Timothy R. Austin, 
"Language Crafted: A Linguistic Theory of Poetic Syntax" 
published by Indiana U.  I don't think we can base any ideas about 
grammar on poetry.

> So where can we look to avoid artificial prose styles and poetic 
> styles which are both artificial and free? I would suggest looking at 
> direct speech - not long set pieces but those small conversational 
> speeches which are common in the historical books. There we may find 
> something more like the natural language of the Israelites of the 
> period of writing.

Possibly, though even there we may encounter artificially crafted 
material, such as the speeches in Job; we also may run into 
dialectical matters (witness the shibboleth story).  My approach is 
to look to various and sundry types of prose and try to figure out 
what grammatical threads tie them together.


Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
A Bible that's falling apart means a life that isn't.