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From Utterances to Speech Acts

By Mikhail Kissine

"Kissine offers a new theory of speech acts which is philosophically sophisticated and builds on work in cognitive science, formal semantics, and linguistic typology. This highly readable, brilliant essay is a major contribution to the field."

--François Recanati, Institut Jean-Nicod


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Book Information

   

Title: Major Poems of the Hebrew Bible
Subtitle: At the interface of Prosody and Structutal Analysis - Volume II: 85 Psalms and Job 4-14
Written By: Jan P. Fokkelman
URL: http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=10&pid=29760
Series Title: Studia Semitica Neerlandica, 41
Description:

Volume II of Major Poems of the Hebrew Bible deals with 85 Psalms (83 poems) and the poems in Job 4-14, and aims at presenting an integrated prosodical theory which is able to bypass the highly controversial question of metrics. There are two approaches which initially are kept apart on grounds of method: structural analysis and the counting of the original, i.e. pre-Masoretic, syllables. Each poem receives a compact description of structure which gives a reasoned delimitation of cola, verses, and strophes. In a separate operation, the syllable counts for each word, colon, verse, strophe, stanza, section and poem are recorded in a comprehensive Appendix. All the poems under discussion show a precise integer as the average of syllables per colon. For half of them this is 8.00, the others have either 7.00 or 9.00. The 9.00 is a ceiling: there is no Psalm with a higher average. Combining the two approaches, the author shows that the poets themselves did count their syllables, and how they were able to mesh the syllable figures with the structural units of their compositions in a virtuoso combination. The greatest challenge of this enterprise is to delimit and objectify the correct colometry for all the songs, as the figure of syllables per colon depends on the right amount of cola. There are only about 30 Psalms which have a cola figure that can be considered beyond doubt. Fortunately, in the Book of Job the correct number of cola is certain for most chapters. Here we meet the number 8 again as a normative figure.

Publication Year: 2000
Publisher: Brill
Review: Become a Reviewer
BibTex: View BibTex record
Linguistic Field(s): Phonology
Ling & Literature
Subject Language(s): Hebrew, Ancient

Versions:
Format: Hardback
ISBN: 9023233816
ISBN-13: 9789023233817
Pages: 516
Prices: Europe EURO 121.00
U.S. $ 180.00