Internal Parallelism in Classical Hebrew Verse (original) (raw)
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Hebrew Studies, 2023
David Tsumura’s Vertical Grammar of Parallelism in Biblical Hebrew is a rigorous and intriguing study on the notion of vertical grammar in biblical Hebrew literature. Tsumura posits that vertical grammar occurs “when a sentence ‘nucleus’ is divided between two parallel lines of a bicolon” (more explanation below).1 Tsumura proposes that a vertical grammar reading of many instances of parallelism in biblical Hebrew literature is a superior alternative interpretation than what translators normally identify as ellipsis (or “verb gapping) and scansion in Hebrew poetry. He also demonstrates cases in which vertical grammar is operative in Janus parallelism, biblical Hebrew prose, and Ugaritic.
Review of Vertical Grammar of Parallelism in Biblical Hebrew (SBL Press)
'Ancient Israel and Its Literature' Series, 2023
David Tsumura's Vertical Grammar of Parallelism in Biblical Hebrew is a rigorous and intriguing study on the notion of vertical grammar in biblical Hebrew literature. Tsumura posits that vertical grammar occurs "when a sentence 'nucleus' is divided between two parallel lines of a bicolon" (more explanation below). 1 Tsumura proposes that a vertical grammar reading of many instances of parallelism in biblical Hebrew literature is a superior alternative interpretation than what translators normally identify as ellipsis (or "verb gapping) and scansion in Hebrew poetry. He also demonstrates cases in which vertical grammar is operative in Janus parallelism, biblical Hebrew prose, and Ugaritic. SUMMARY OF THE MONOGRAPH Tsumura's monograph begins with a definition of parallelism. Because this definition is essential to the integrity of his monograph, I quote in exensio: Parallelism is the poetic device of expressing "one thought through two lines." Its two basic features are repetition and correspondence of elements (i.e., sounds, affixes, words, and phrases) between two parallel lines. It is thus a linguistic and stylistic device of poetry in which two or more lines constitute a complete sentence and their elements correspond to each other semantically, grammatically, or even phonetically, with repetition and variation. Building on this definition, Tsumura traces developments in the field of parallelism in poetry beginning with Lowth and with an emphasis on Roman Jakobson's contribution to the notion of linguistic parallelism. Framed with his view of developments in the field, Tsumura highlights the need for a rigorous grammatical analysis of parallelism, "especially an 1. Tsumura, p. 4.
Vertical Grammar of Biblical Hebrew Parallelism: The AXX’B Pattern in Tetracolons
Vetus Testamentum
In Hebrew poetry, a vertical grammatical relation between two parallel lines can be noted in bicolons such as Ps 18:42. One can also recognize the vertical grammar between the first and the last lines of a tetracolon, in such passages as Amos 1:5, Job 12:24-25, 2 Sam 3:33b-34c, Ps 89:36-37, and 2 Sam 7:22. In this pattern, the AXX’B pattern, the middle two lines are a bicolon (XX’) inserted into another bicolon (AB). In this article I focus on the vertical grammatical relationship between line A and line B, which constitute either a simple sentence or a complex sentence in the Hebrew text.
(2019) Vertical Grammar of Biblical Hebrew Parallelism: The AXX'B Pattern in Tetracolons
Vetus Testamentum 69, 2019
In Hebrew poetry, a vertical grammatical relation between two parallel lines can be noted in bicolons such as Ps 18:42. One can also recognize the vertical grammar between the first and the last lines of a tetracolon, in such passages as Amos 1:5, Job 12:24-25, 2 Sam 3:33b-34c, Ps 89:36-37, and 2 Sam 7:22. In this pattern, the AXX'B pattern, the middle two lines are a bicolon (XX') inserted into another bicolon (AB). In this article I focus on the vertical grammatical relationship between line A and line B, which constitute either a simple sentence or a complex sentence in the Hebrew text.
“Double Segmentation” in Biblical Hebrew Poetry and the Poetic Cantillation System*
ZDMG, 2018
The principle of double segmentation is at work in Biblical Hebrew poetry in spite of the structural parallelism: both syntactic and poetic segmentations are evident, giving place to dynamic discrepancies between these two levels. In order to illustrate this claim I turned to the poetic system of cantillation of Three books examined for the selected Psalms corpus. I claimed that the poetic system of cantillation manifests poetic prosody, sensitive to the poetic segmentation: (1) there are two patterns of versification for couplets and for triplets; (2) there are explicit prosodic rules that set a poetic line as a long conjunctive sequence marked by a monotonous pitch contour and an a-semantic boundary pause, namely as a prosodic unit on its own. However, the cantillation system of Three books is also responsive to the syntactic segmentation: (1) the patterns of doubles and triplets can be sporadically used for pragmatically marked constituents, glossing, pivot phrase, and in order to avoid heavy enjambments; (2) the system is not uniform processing too long poetic units, apparently due to their complex syntactic structure; (3) if the syntax strongly contradicts the versification, the cantillation system would rather follow the syntactic segmentation.