Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

Title: RE: Hebrew Syntax.

Dear Peter,

I see several advantages with discourse analysis. To learn to find the theme (topic) and the rheme of clauses and paragraphs (new information and information already introduced) is illuminating indeed. To look for main-line and background information and how these are expressed,is a fine help to understand a text more thoroughly. I do not teach introductory courses in Hebrew, but I can imagine that a method like the one proposed by Bryan Rocine, the frame of which is discourse analysis, will be effective for the students of such courses. I also admire Alviero Niccacci for his extreme consistency in applying discourse analysis to Hebrew prose, he even has a place for WEYIQTOL as an independent conjugation in his system.

But I am very much concerned with the application of discourse analysis in areas where it does not belong, particularly as respects the *meaning* of the parts of the Hebrew verbal system. Discourse analysis is a descriptive method and not a normative one. It can tell us nothing about the meaning of YIQTOL, QATAL, WAYYIQTOL, and WEQATAL. It cannot even tell us if there is a semantic difference between WAYYIQTOL and YIQTOL,  between QATAL  and WEQATAL. It can only describe the pattern of the *use* of these forms in prose texts. This pattern is important, and it is profitable to study it, but we should not behave as if these patterns could tell us anything about the meaning of verbal forms.

Just make a simple test: Take a part of the book of Samuel or Kings or another book, skip the usual assumptions that there are four different conjugations, and assume instead that there are just two (WAYYIQTOL = YIQTOL and WEQATAL=QATAL) conjugations (and the prefixed WAWs are just conjunctions). Make your discourse analysis on this basis, and see if your results will be different.

My experiance by doing this is that the *general* picture for narratives will be about the same, with WAYYIQTOLs carrying the account forward, but on other levels many of the supposed rules crumble, and much more variation in forms chosen for the same functions will be seen. One may even be able to discover the hundreds of WAYYIQTOLs where the focus is not on the end but on the middle, which is typical for the imperfective aspect. Just try!

Rather than suggesting that you should use a two-component model instead of a four-component one as your point of departure when you do discourse analysis, my point is that the results of your discourse analysis to a great degree depend on the assumptions you make. Therefore it is much more profitable to start with the assumptions themselves and scrutinize them, if you are looking for the meaning of verb forms, than to reason in a circle by trying to confirm by discourse analysis the very results on which your method build.

Regards

Rolf

Rolf Furuli

University of Oslo

> Rolf, thank you for rubbishing discourse analysis
> more thoroughly than Waltke and O'Connor ever did.
>  
> I agree that discourse analysis is not an easy field
> and there is danger of subjectivity. But it cannot be ignored. It is
> well known that in some languages there are words and morphemes whose
> functions can be understood properly only from a level higher than
> the sentence level, i.e. they are discourse particles etc. In other
> languages there are more complex syntactic features which have
> similar discourse level functions.
>  
> It is the proposal of some scholars of biblical
> Hebrew that the choice between verb forms (which is not well
> understood by traditional methods, as is shown by the sharp
> disagreement between yourself and the majority of scholars including
> W&O'C concerning WAYYIQTOL) is determined (in part) by
> discourse level factors. And there is good evidence for this
> hypothesis, although no one would claim that it answers all the
> questions. If you disagree with this hypothesis, please give evidence
> against it rather than ruling it illegitimate.
>  
> Peter Kirk
>

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