Biblical Hebrew Forum

["C. Stirling Bartholomew" <jacksonpollock AT earthlink.net>]

On 8/5/04 7:21 AM, "Peter Kirk" <peterkirk AT qaya.org> wrote:

> On 05/08/2004 05:48, C. Stirling Bartholomew wrote:
> 
>> ... I was
>> looking for some sort of formal mechanism in Hebrew which would function
>> like the Greek article to indicate that this person is already on stage.
>> Perhaps there is no such formal mechanism in Hebrew. Perhaps there is some
>> other means of accomplishing the same function.
>> 
>>  
>> 
> Well, my suggestion is that the use of a simple name, with no title,
> father's name, place of origin etc signals this.

Peter,

So as a general rule, a participant's level of encoding will be inversely
proportional to accessibility in the narrative. When a participant is highly
accessible zero anaphora is adequate. When a participant has moved off stage
into the wings a full noun phrase may be required. When a participant is
being introduced for the first time something more elaborate than a full
noun phrase may be used.

I was working in the first chorus of Iphigenia (Euripides) this morning
where new participant encoding is similar to Genesis. Articles are not used
with names of persons. New participants are given two, four or six lines of
introduction according to their status in the story. Achilles' introduction
is more elaborate than Paris'. Once the participant is active the level of
encoding drops.

Thanks for the comments,
Clay Bartholomew