Text-Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew (Library of Hebrew Bible / Old Testament Studies | LHBOTS/JSOTS)
Overview
Modern linguistics is a relative newcomer in the scientific world, and text-linguistics, or discourse analysis, is one of its youngest disciplines. This fact has inclined many toward skepticism of its value for the Hebraist, yet much benefit is thereby overlooked.
In this work, the author examines recent contributions to Hebrew text-linguistics by Niccacci, Andersen, Eskhult, Khan, and Longacre, evaluating them against a twofold standard of theoretical and methodological integrity, and clarity of communication. An extensive introduction to one particularly promising model of text analysis (from Longacre's tagmemic school) is given, and a step-by-step methodology is presented. Analyses according to this model and methodology are given of seven extended text samples, each building on the findings of the previous analyses: Judg. 2; Lev. 14:1-32; Lev. 6:1-7:37; parallel instructions and historical reports about the building of the Tabernacle, from Exodus 25-40; Judg. 10:6-12:7; and the book of Ruth in its entirety. Considerable attention is given to the question of text-linguistics and reported speech.
Top Highlights
“the role(s) of different types of clauses in different types of texts” (Page 11)
“The data constitute the only unquestionable ‘fact’ of the language.” (Page 75)
“and none would deny that language is expressed within a context.” (Page 76)
“Language exists as a part of a wider context of human behaviour, and this context bears on the use of language features.” (Page 76)
“n a research publication: the author’s presuppositions, theoretical perspective and methodology.” (Page 15)
Praise for the Print Edition
I strongly recommend Dawson to anyone who has tried to study the advanced work of Andersen, Longacre, Muraoka, etc. but emerged baffled. Dawson will help you understand those works.
—Amazon reviewer
Product Details
- Title: Text-Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew
- Author: David Allan Dawson
- Publisher: Sheffield
- Publication Date: 1994
- Pages: 242
Sample Pages from the Print Edition
Reviews
1 rating
Roland Ramsdale
9/6/2018
I cannot review the book itself, but am reviewing the sample pages. They are either badly chosen samples or the book contains no Hebrew. My decision whether or not to purchase needs to be based on a worked example to see if it explains discourse analysis based on the Hebrew text in a manner that I can understand.
