Some Recent Trends in Biblical Hebrew Linguistics: A Few Pointers Towards a More Comprehensive Model of Language Use

Despite a slow start, one of the major trends in current Biblical Hebrew research is the use of structuralist-oriented approaches to identify and describe linguistic phenomena in terms of their distributional patterns. Designing more effective tools to carry out this type of research electronically leads to a situation where both the benefits and boundaries of structuralist approaches are starting to show. There is a growing need for more adequate theoretical frames of reference to interpret and complement the taxonomies of distributional patterns. In light of developments in the fields of pragmatics, cognitive linguistics, and sociolinguistics, some pointers are formulated that may assist scholars in their quest for a more comprehensive model of language and language use. It is believed that such a model, on the one hand, will help Biblical Hebrew scholars in defining more adequate heuristic tools for the investigation of specific problems, and, on the other hand, may serve itself as an integrating frame of reference for the interpretation of research results of various problems.