Linguistic Database Research Articles

The Prophetical Stories: The Narratives about the Prophets in the Hebrew Bible, Their Literary Types and History (review)

Hebrew Studies 32 (1991) 169 Reviews with the total lack of any real sharing going on as regards data, equipment, and algorithms. The amount of duplicated effort continues to be a disgrace, while, with noteworthy exceptions, those few scholars who do develop anything really useful often become entrepreneurs or pitchmen instead. A few of the pieces may be of interest to readers of this journal: R.-Ferdinand Poswick and Jean Bajard discuss the COMPUCORD package, which looks to be a promising tool for users of PC type computers. (How to acquire this package is not, however, indicated.) F. H. Polak deals with "Epic Formulas in Biblical Narrative. Frequency and Distribution." Y. T. Radday and collaborators compare the end of Genesis with the beginning of Exodus using the tools familiar from their earlier work and, as before, refuse to accept the results of their investigation when those results conflict with their theological presuppositions. Perhaps both of these studies demonstrate, more than anything else, that massive doses of computing power and statistics require even stronger doses of sensitivity to the text to be useful. Of potentially greatest interest is surely Marc Vervenne's discussion of "Hebrew Verb Form and Function: A Syntactic Case Study with Reference to a Linguistic Data Base." Unfortunately, however, all we learn here is what information should or should not be coded into the database. No actual conclusions are presented. In sum, the reader is urged to have a look at this volume to see what others are doing and, in general, to avoid replicating it. I, for one, am still waiting to see when the computer revolution will lead to truly new and imaginative ways of dealing with Hebrew language and texts. Stephen A. Kaufman Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute ofReligion Cincinnati, OH 45220 THE PROPHETICAL STORIES: THE NARRATIVES ABOUT THE PROPHETS IN THE HEBREW BIBLE, THEIR LITERARY TYPES AND HISTORY. By Alexander Rofc. Pp. 218. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1988. Cloth, $20.00. In 1970 A. RoflS published an article which marked an important milestone in the form-critical treatment of prophetic stories. The present work incorporates that article in revised form and presents extensive additional Hebrew Studies 32 (1991) 170 Reviews analyses. The first edition of this work was in Hebrew (1982); a revised Hebrew edition appeared in 1986. The current English version does not say that it is revised, but it does update references to the author's own recent writings. Works appearing during the 1980s outside of Israel are not engaged. This fact need not constitute a problem, if one allows the work its proper location in the history of the discussion. Fortunately, the English form now facilitates a wide impact for this study. Rofe's agenda is a full-fledged fonn-historical one which not merely analyzes literary types but also seeks to show their development. Rofe envisions this as a movement from the simple to the complex. Thus, in chaps. I to 3, he moves from the "short legenda" via "elaborations" of it to the full-fledged "vila." Most of the discussion is based on an internal examination of the Elisha and Elijah stories. It utilizes, however, external postexilic affinities of 2 Kgs 1:2-17a (Elijah responding to Ahaziah) to reach the conclusion that this story stems from the Second Temple. The highlights of Rofe's further analysis are as follows. One kind of elaboration occurred in "political legenda," concerned with such political activities as war. In another development, prophetic stories were drawn into historiographic accounts. A biography focusing on the prophetic person was created for Jeremiah. In general, there was a movement from magic to ethics. Simple legenda were "morally neutral" and magical in character. Some stories of this kind were transfonned into "ethicallegenda" through additions and reshapings (Elisha's healing of Naaman, Elijah at Zarephath, Moses at Meribah, Isaiah's healing of Hezekiah). Akin to the ethical legenda is the exemplum, a story about a historical character or event designed to "edify and inspire"; the story of Michaiah (1 Kgs 22:1-28) is of this sort. A non-historical account of a similar kind is the "parable," for which Jonah and the story of the man of God at...

Proceedings of the Second International Colloquium. Bible and Computer: Methods, Tools, Results. Jerusalem, 9-13 June 1988 (review)

Hebrew Studies 32 (1991) 168 Reviews lap to paradox. If we are dealing, as in Pardee's "positional parallelism:' with parallel syntactic structures, the particular constituents may be similar or dissimilar in meaning. The lines are parallel, not the words. "Semantic parallelism," I have argued, is an erroneous conception. Adoption of this view would resolve some of the ironies in Pardee's observations. The contribution of Pardee's analysis consists of his numerous insights and cautions which do not aim to produce an overarching theory of Ugaritic and Hebrew prosody. Anyone with a serious interest in such a theory will want to read and reflect on Pardee's investigation. Edward L. Greenstein Jewish Theological Seminary ofAmerica New York. NY 10027 PROCEEDINGS OF THE SECOND INTERNATIONAL COLLOQUIUM . BIBLE AND COMPUTER: METHODS, TOOLS, RESULTS. JERUSALEM, 9-13 JUNE 1988. Travaux de linguistique quantitative 43 = Debora 5. pp. 652. Paris: Champion I Geneva: Slatkine, 1989. Paper. This volume is a collection of thirty-five largely full-length "abstracts" of presentations made at the Jerusalem conference, printed by photo-offset at a reduction of about fifty percent. Most of the European participants chose to write in English. The result of these policies is that few papers are legible, and fewer still are in readable English. Practitioners of form criticism will not be disappointed here. The expected number of papers delight us with tales of the discovery of the 'sort' command on their system, the grueling details of the design of database structures, the use of Hypercard, how to design a non-Roman font, and the ongoing development of major databases that are almost always, unfortunately , much less than advertised. Of those that appear to be worthwhile research efforts, not a few overwhelm the amateur with meaningless statistical formulas. In short, although the "Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing" was associated with this endeavor, the level here is far short of that expected at gatherings of the ALLC. One comes away, as before, impressed both with the relative paucity of innovative computerbased research methods and ideas being applied to biblical materials and Hebrew Studies 32 (1991) 169 Reviews with the total lack of any real sharing going on as regards data, equipment, and algorithms. The amount of duplicated effort continues to be a disgrace, while, with noteworthy exceptions, those few scholars who do develop anything really useful often become entrepreneurs or pitchmen instead. A few of the pieces may be of interest to readers of this journal: R.-Ferdinand Poswick and Jean Bajard discuss the COMPUCORD package, which looks to be a promising tool for users of PC type computers. (How to acquire this package is not, however, indicated.) F. H. Polak deals with "Epic Formulas in Biblical Narrative. Frequency and Distribution." Y. T. Radday and collaborators compare the end of Genesis with the beginning of Exodus using the tools familiar from their earlier work and, as before, refuse to accept the results of their investigation when those results conflict with their theological presuppositions. Perhaps both of these studies demonstrate, more than anything else, that massive doses of computing power and statistics require even stronger doses of sensitivity to the text to be useful. Of potentially greatest interest is surely Marc Vervenne's discussion of "Hebrew Verb Form and Function: A Syntactic Case Study with Reference to a Linguistic Data Base." Unfortunately, however, all we learn here is what information should or should not be coded into the database. No actual conclusions are presented. In sum, the reader is urged to have a look at this volume to see what others are doing and, in general, to avoid replicating it. I, for one, am still waiting to see when the computer revolution will lead to truly new and imaginative ways of dealing with Hebrew language and texts. Stephen A. Kaufman Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute ofReligion Cincinnati, OH 45220 THE PROPHETICAL STORIES: THE NARRATIVES ABOUT THE PROPHETS IN THE HEBREW BIBLE, THEIR LITERARY TYPES AND HISTORY. By Alexander Rofc. Pp. 218. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1988. Cloth, $20.00. In 1970 A. RoflS published an article which marked an important milestone in the form-critical treatment of prophetic stories. The present work incorporates that article in revised...

The chameleon approach: A technique to reach more users

The possible benefits of computing in humanities research are often wasted because of the psychological barriers that computers evoke in non-specialists. This paper examines the underlying causes and suggests some ways of alleviating the problem. One approach in particular, i.e. ease through familiarity, is discussed in more detail. It is illustrated by means of a description of a database system that uses this approach: the Linguistic DataBase, which contains syntactic analysis trees of natural language data.

Fuzzy linguistic data bases: An application

This paper discusses the empirical development and use of a fuzzy linguistic data base which is relational in character. Unlike conventional fuzzy searches for crisp data, we search a data base for fuzzy information. The data base supports another code which does fuzzy aggregation of data. It has been applied to support decision making connected with the construction of military budgets for command, control and communications (C3).

DANwORD, A Linguistic Data Base for Frequency Studies in Modern Danish

DANwORD, A Linguistic Data Base for Frequency Studies in Modern Danish