The Representation of Speech in Biblical Hebrew Narrative: A Linguistic Analysis (review)

Hebrew Studies 38 (1997) 97 Reviews tional organizations. In addition to reviewing some of the classical and more recent works in these areas, Scanlin presents some of the material now available for computer as well as some of the Hebrew dictionary projects which are now under way. The bibliography (pp. 242-276) has been updated (as far as 1993) and presented in a more user-friendly way compared to the first English edition. There are well over a hundred new titles which are listed alphabetically by author rather than according to the chapter divisions of the introduction. It is, of course, impossible to take into account every title of the ever-growing literature on biblical textual criticism, but a few which are lacking would have been useful. With regard to the Septuagint, the French translation in the series La Bible d'Alexandrie has now completed the entire Pentateuch. With regard to the Beuron project for the Old Latin (cf. p. 92), it should .be noted that Sapientia Salomonis (completed 1985) and Esaias (completed 1993) are now available for the Old Testament. Under the section on the Vulgate (cf. p. 99), the comprehensive edition of the Old Testament undertaken by the Benedictine Monastery of St. Jerome, Rome, was completed in 1995 with the publication of 1 and 2 Maccabees. Some minor errata: on page 46, read "IJ;~ for clJ;~; on page 190, note 2, read "invenimus" for "invenimur" in the quotation from Jerome; in the bibliography on page 269, read "Eugene Charles Ulrich" for "Ernest Charles Ulrich." The scope of this new edition remains the same as its predecessors-an introduction to the use of the Biblia Hebraica rather than a comprehensive introduction to the more theoretical aspects of textual criticism. In its updated version, it continues to be a welcome tool for students of the Hebrew Bible. Stephen Pisano Pontifical Biblical Institute Rome 1-00187 Italy THE REPRESENTATION OF SPEECH IN BIBLICAL HEBREW NARRATIVE: A LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS. By Cynthia L. Miller. Harvard Semitic Monographs 55. Pp. xx + 466. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996. Cloth, $44.95. In the introduction, the author gives a brief survey of previous studies about reported speech and concludes that they are inadequate in two Hebrew Studies 38 (1997) 98 Reviews respects: syntactic fonns of direct and indirect speech have not been catalogued from a linguistic perspective, and the distribution and discoursepragmatic functions of reported speech have not been taken into consideration within the contexts of dialogic exchange and encompassing narrative. As a remedy for this deficiency it is proposed to present a linguistic theory for situating represented speech within a theory of contextsof -speaking, to examine the features of varieties of indirect and direct speech, to consider reported speech within the broader contexts of conversation and narrative, and, finally, to detennine the discourse-pragmatic functions of the syntactic varieties of direct quotative frames. The second chapter deals with pragmatics and metapragmatics. Pragmatics is defined as involving the relationship between the linguistic signal and its interpreters. However, reported speech is not only speech within speech, but also speech about speech, and therefore also metapragmatic , to use a subcategory of lakobson's "metalanguage." Both quotative frame and quotation are metapragmatic, and the verb chosen in the frame is metapragmatic as well because it reflects the reporting speaker's pragmatic analysis of the purpose/function of the original locution. One of the parameters for distinguishing direct and indirect speech in biblical Hebrew is deixis. Deictics index person, time, and spatial location relative to the speech event. For example, speaker-oriented elements relating to the deictic center of the reported speech event are excluded in indirect speech. A second important parameter seems to be syntactic incorporation; indirect speech is nowhere embedded within direct speech. Merging these two parameters, biblical Hebrew testifies to the presence of free indirect discourse in which the voices of the reporting and the reported speakers are combined. The next chapter examines the syntactic varieties of indirect speech. A large part of the discussion is devoted to the problem of the so-called ki recitativum, and the author concludes that ,:> should be understood as the first word of the quotation rather than as a complementizer (p. 116...