Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

Title: RE: discourse analysis and circular reasoning

Dear Peter,

There is no reason why you should be a linguistic back-packer even though discrourse analysis is just descriptive. The simple way is to study individual forms one by one, and then draw your conclusion. This can reveal whether a particular form is a tense, an aspect, or has other characteristics. Please look at (1) and (2) below (I use participles to avoid the problem of conjugation number).

(1) 1 Kings 1.22 While she was still speaking ( (t®rR;bådVm hΊn®dwøo) with the king, Natan the prophet arrived (aD;b).

(2) 1 Kings 6:33 While she was still speaking (rE;bådVm ŠwŠn®dwøo with them, look! the messenger came down  (dérOy) to him.

In both examples the action of the second verb (in (1) the second verb is a QATAL or a participle, in (2) it is  a participle) intersects the first verb. From this we draw the "normative" conclusion that a participle *can*  be intersected by another verb in the middle, even by another participle; no disocurse analysis is necessary for that conclusion. If we find hundreds of examples of of participles where not the end but the middle is focussed upon, we can conclude that this is an important characteristic of the form. If we go further and analyse *all* the occurences of the participle (we need not even put much stress on whether the form is foreground or background) and compare the results, we can find a generalization that covers all the results of our analyses.

You can see my analysis of the participles below. First vertical column: the passive participles, second column: the active participles, third column: both participles, fourth column: percentage of all participles.

                 PASSIVE  ACTIVE        TOTAL   %

PAST            339    1406    1745    20,2
PRE-PAST       25       69      94    1,2
PERFECT    299      143     372     4,3
PRESENT    221    1772    1993    23,1
FUTURE                97      573     670     7,8
MODAL                74       66     138     1,6
GNOMIC               42    569      610     7,0

IMPERATIVE          3       5        8 

SUBSTANT        304    2073    2377    27,5
ADJECTIVE   329      283     612     7,1
                          
TOTAL   1733    6959    8 692  

I have done exactly the same with the finite forms. I would like to mention that  the results of a simple discourse analysis of the 1.020 YIQTOLs with past reference, is that 889 of them have some word element preceding them, and this element prevents them from from getting a prefixed wa(y). If the word order was reversed, the verbs would have preceded the mentioned word elements, and they would have been written as WAYYIQTOLs. These YIQTOLs are of the same roots as verbs realized as WAYYIQTOLS, and the context suggests that they have the same aspect as their WAYYIQTOL counterparts. It is high time that the fairy tales that the YIQTOLs with pase reference represent "durative past" and have a different aspect compared with the WAYYIQTOLs be abandoned!

So instead of being a linguistic back-packer, I suggest that you study the smallest units of language, because this can establish * verb meaning*; discourse analysis can only establish stylistics and function, not meaning.

Regards

Rolf

Rolf Furuli

University of Oslo

> But Rolf, if Niccacci's method is
> "descriptive" and so wanting, what is
> different about any other method including yours? As far as I can
> see,
> by your argument there is no method by which we can find out how
> many
> conjugations there are or anything about the meaning of Hebrew. So
> should we all give up and go home? Or how can we find a method which
> is
> not circular (and which is not based, as yours is, on subjective
> judgments of which verbs are past, present or future) which can
> actually
> tell us something about the semantics of Hebrew?
>
> Peter Kirk
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Rolf Furuli [mailto:furuli AT online.no]
> > Sent: 15 April 2002 08:10
> > To: Biblical Hebrew
> > Subject: RE: discourse analysis and circular reasoning
> >
> > Dear Peter,
> >
> > I have never said that Niccacci's or anybody else's method is
> > "suspect". Niccacci has done a great job by describing
> discourse
> > patterns in detail. My principal
> point, however, has been that
> > discourse analysis is *descriptive*, and  the method can
> never be
> > used to show how many conjugations there are in Hebrew, let
> alone
> > their meaning. That  this is possible is implied by
> Niccacci's
> > "Syntax..", and in this area I criticise him. My
> second point has
> > been that the method entails a measure of circularity, and this
> is
> > admitted by the linguist on whose work Niccacci builds,
> namely,
> > Harald Weinrich. In his work "Tense and Time" Archivum
> Linguisticum 1
> > (new Series), p 41, he admits that his method is
> "unassailable",i.e.
> > it cannot be tested by other means.
> >
> > Therefore, if you put it five conjugations, the output is
> five
> > conjugations. My advise is to use discourse analysis in the
> ares
> > where it belongs, namely, as describing patterns. And do not
> pretend
> > that we by the help of this method can learn anything about
> the
> > number of conjugations or the meaning of each conjugation. This
> is
> > reserved for a study of the smallest parts of
> language
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Regards
> >
> > Rolf
> >
> >
> > Rolf Furuli
> >
> > University of Oslo
> >