Comments on: Discourse grammar versus traditional grammar

By: Whose banner do you carry? | NT Discourse

Whose banner do you carry? | NT Discourse — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 14:04:55 +0000

[...] grammar has to offer that they ask whether we still need traditional grammars. I tried to explain here the need and role for each approach, but there seems to be a tendency to throw out the old when [...]

By: Stephen C. Carlson

Stephen C. Carlson — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 23:43:01 +0000

I would agree that discourse grammar is largely complementary. I have found that it answers about the text that the traditional grammatical approaches often ignore. This is especially true for word order.

But discourse grammar is not merely complementary to traditional grammar in some areas, but it seems to have more theoretically grounded or at least a better satisfying approach. In particular, I have found that discourse grammar provides (at least to me) a better explanation for the use and non-use of the article with unique references (e.g., God, proper names, etc.) than the traditional grammar. This is also true for connective particles.

By: Steve Runge

Steve Runge — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 05:10:54 +0000

John, good questions. There are assumptions we operate under most of the time. One is that the writers are using the language in understandable ways to accomplish their communication objectives. If not, how could a reader follow them? It would be like the _____ in Alice in Wonderland who made words mean what he wanted. It doesn’t work like that. In terms of cognitive constraints such as that with γάρ, I tend to take them as Prime Directives in the Trekkie sense. This is not so narrow as to eliminate flexibility, quite the contrary. They are what I fall back on when I hit a wall. If what follows is supposed to strengthen what precedes, then what do the other indicators say, where do they point. The hair stands up on the back of my neck when I hear someone confidently talk about a silent voice or writer, whether it be Q in the gospels, or this opponent in Romans. It is a hypothetical presupposition that is not explicitly supported by the text. He may be right, but it is his problem to prove it, not mine. If it requires me to go against what I know to be true, what I have found to work in most every other Pauline passage, I put my hand on my wallet to make sure it is still there. I have never read Campbell’s book, he may be claiming something very legitimate and plausible. But if it argues against the plain sense of the text, you have to ask yourself whether it is worth it or not.

Romans 1:14-15 are the last main propositions before the strengthening material of vv. 16-17. You need to answer what v. 18 is strengthening. What precedes, of course, but WHICH what precedes, the last main propositions or the strengthening. This is where the flow of the discourse comes in, since the connective is ambiguous on the matter. In either case, the strengthening constraint remains unchanged.

By: John

John — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 01:44:48 +0000

If understanding comes first, then it seems like definition is more subjective than some would like it to be, to play the advocate a bit!

My undergraduate and graduate training in NT Greek included both basic grammar and discourse analysis. As I continue to read, study and interact with biblical scholars, I can relate to “Grasshopper’s” e-mail above in that I am having more success in reading larger sections of text and looking for flow and connection as opposed to (or at least less than) the parsed form and category. But then, I begin to wonder how much I am prone to “steering” the text vs. drawing out the meaning.

Case in point, I am reading Doug Campbell’s Deliverance of God. In short, he states that γάρ in Romans 1:18 is NOT the traditionally understood continued thought of Paul, but a transition to an opponent’s voice in the form of “speech-in-character” or προσωποποιία. I find his case plausible on a number of fronts, but also see the tension between possibilities in the flow of argument in Greco-Roman rhetoric and the traditionally held grammatical categories for the conjunction.

Further, I can see this as both affirming or negating Levinsohn’s basic premise that “γάρ always serves a single function in discourse: to signal that what follows strengthens or supports what precedes.” The supporting material could be the opponent’s!

So, can meaning be determined at that level, by looking first to the flow of the discourse and then by affirming it with grammar? What happens if the flow of the argument and the meaning is a great fit, but the grammar conflicts with the potential discourse? Must we fall back on hard grammatical categories?

By: Carl Conrad

Carl Conrad — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 22:22:09 +0000

I think that the question is good and that your answer, Steve, may well be as good an answer as can be given to it. We really do have to understand what a text is saying before we can describe it or categorize its functional features. I think too that it’s only honest to acknowledge that our description and analysis of functional features is grounded in a theoretical framework that must be understood by those who carry out the analysis and those who read and discuss it. There are strengths and weaknesses in traditional grammar — beyond question — and there are also strengths and weaknesses in discourse grammar; both are open to development and improvement.