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  • From: "Bryan Rocine" <brocine AT earthlink.net>
  • To: "Biblical Hebrew" <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: tagmemics, definition for criticism...
  • Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2001 21:17:05 -0500


Hi Vince, et. al

I like usually like to pipe in on Longacrean matters, and I
will be true to form here. Sorry I didn't respond sooner.
I have been out of town for a few days.

Vince wrote:

> chers amis/cheres amies,
>
> i will try to outline the basics of tagmemics, with the
hope that if my
> outline is incorrect, that someone will correct me in the
spirit of
> cooperation...
>
> essentially, the goal appears to be the exegesis of the
biblical text and
> the analysis of nonindoeuropean languages for the purposes
of bible
> translation (admirable goals, but not usually the goals of
mainstream
> theoretical linguistics).

right. It may not be apparent to all from your statement of
tagmemics' goal that it grew largely out of the need to
*learn* hundreds of languages quickly. Longacre has only
approached the biblical languages secondarily.

The tagmemic approach to learning a language is pragmatic
(if you will allow my broad use of the term); that is, the
language learning is approached in this way: "how do I
descibe in this language? how do I tell a story? how do I
persuade? how do I instruct?" etc. The "top-down" aspect
of the model comes from the assumption that language is used
universally to perform a small handful of such tasks. A
complete set of the tasks identified in a matrix of three
binary variables. That matrix would create 2 x 2 x 2 = 8
behavioral genres theoretically. The Tanakh may only have
six attested.

>
> there are continuities with american structuralism a la
bloomfield,
> harris, etc; but more directly with the basic principles
of structuralism
> going back to Saussure's lectures. the tagmeme is the
correlated class and
> slot, by which is meant paradigmatic and syntagmatic
relations a la
> Saussure. i take this to be a non-generative, taxonomic
exercise.

yup. once again, a very useful exercise for learning a
language and translation.

>
> the upshot is a methodology for field work, summarized
e.g. in Longacre's
> work on "discovery procedures": "guess-and-check"
structuralist analysis.
>
> my interest is, what is a "possible language"? according
to Pike & Pike,
> all human behaviour including language is system:

Right. Kenneth Pike, in referring to tagmemics, said, "I'm
interested in truth about man, about how language is related
to man, about how language is related to behavior. I
wouldn't ever grant that I'm interested only in language"
(quoted in Fries, "Tagmemics"). This is a crucial point
when it comes to appreciating Longacre's work on BH, IMO.
Longacre went looking in BH for how the ancients *did*
stuff. He expected a distinct combination of clause types
to fill the slots associated with each of the universal
(language) behaviors. The approach is in this way top-down,
guess-and-check, but it works well for the linguistically
modest but spiritually noblest of goals: (as you say)
translating the Bible into as many languages as possible.
Because it is a guess-and-check model is not to say that the
conclusions *remain* guesses. ;-) I think there is a
*check* in the guess-and-check method that may render a
guess as reliable. ;-) The checking is bottom-up.

This model is taxonomic, to be sure, but the universal
behavioral tasks *organize language learning*, so that the
learning becomes easier and more efficient. I hear Pike was
amazing in his ability to learn a new language.

a strong claim for
> structuralist anthropology, which is very much outdated.
crucially, there
> is no constraint in principle on the number and nature of
linguistic
> levels, no constraint at all, except that it would conform
to
> structuralist analysis. pure, unconstrained "induction".
it reminds me
> very much of "stratificational" approaches, again with no
constraints.

fair enough.

>
> longacre's discourse grammar is, crucially, "deduction":
very much so. and
> i don't think it is descriptively adequate, judging by the
work on
> Genesis, IMHO.

Longacre certainly did not start small. I mean he did not
start with morpheme or phoneme and work his way to larger
combinations. He started right in with how clause types
fill functional slots within behavioral/functional genres,
i.e. a restricted but high place in the hierarchy of the
language. That may be unsatisfactory to a (linguistic)
purist. But heh, he's getting up there in years, and he
wanted to get the most bang he could for his tagmemic buck.
;-)

I would admit that his work is not usually argumentative;
rather it is descriptive, albeit *not* by the rigorous
standards of cutting-edge linguistics, which requires
argumentation.

Personally, my problem with Longacre is with his paragraph
types. The types are not identifiable morpho-syntactically
or by objective linguistic means. I accept den Exter
Blokland's criticisms in this regard. One has to
read/understand the paragraphs before one can label them.
But if we have already read and understood them...the
taxonomy has become superfluous. I skip Longacre's whole
paragraph business and instead describe by "discourse
embedding," which I believe is more true to the tagmemic
model because it allows for recursion.

Hoping to help,
Bryan




B. M. Rocine
Associate Pastor
Living Word Church
6101 Court St. Rd.
Syracuse, NY 13206

(office) 315-437-6744
(home) 315-479-8267





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