Towards a computer-assisted classification of discourse types in the Psalms

Resumen

The distinction between narrative and discoursive texts has become a fundamental issue in the study of textual (and verbal) syntax in biblical Hebrew, and the consideration of syntactic differences has been suggested: verbal forms, word order, grammatical person and particles with a macrosyntactic function. A coherent classification of different kinds of discourse in the book of Psalms is needed, and for this purpose we use suitable computer programs that enable us to reflect the identity and intensity of these linguistic phenomena. The procedural discourse type lacks in Psalms, and the predictive one is seldom attested due to the fact that weqatal chains are wanting in this book. On the contrary, the narrative discourse type is well attested by several wayyiqtol chains. Although the unchained use of weqatal and wayyiqtol verbs hardly characterizes a particular type of discourse nor modifies the discourse type in which they are inserted, it is always necessary to analyze these forms within their context. Moreover, if we take some criteria into account, such as poetic structure and prosodic scope, we shall be able to automatize the process of delimiting segments of text. We show here that, when weqatal or wayyiqtol occur in the first hemistich of the verse, some other finite verbal form appears in the same textual segment and the continuity of the text is maintained. On the contrary, when weqatal or wayyiqtol occur in the second hemistich of the verse, they are frequently the last finite verbal form of a textual segment, thus indicating a break. In order to handle the exceptions to this rule, some additional criteria have been used: in the case of weqatal, the consideration of different textual levels (subsegments) has been mentioned; in the case of wayyiqtol, the syntactic structure (0-qatal) of the preceding verb has been noted