Paragraphs as episodes: distinguishing paragraphs in Biblical Hebrew narrative text on the basis of linguistic devices

What it is about

Not read: the PDF could not be fetched. From the title: the thesis treats a narrative paragraph as an episode (a unit of one setting, one set of participants, one action sequence) and asks which linguistic devices signal its boundaries — likely candidates are וַיְהִי with a temporal phrase, a change of time or place, the (re)introduction of participants with full noun phrases, a break in the wayyiqtol chain (x-qatal, verbless clauses), and closing summaries. Check against the text.

Ideas

• I1. (to check) A paragraph-boundary scorer on the Torah trees: one point each for marker וַיְהִי, a time or place change, a full-NP subject switch, and a chain break before the clause; evaluate against the Masoretic petuchah/setumah marks (precision and recall).
• I2. Report which single device predicts the Masoretic boundaries best; that device becomes the first rule.

For Mova

I1–I2 belong to Discourse: narrative, speech and the shape of a text §8 (paragraphs and section markers) and to a paragraph step in tools/macula, using the Masoretic marks as gold (if the WLC data carries them; otherwise as a gap to fill). Re-read once the PDF is in.

Cite

The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work.

@inproceedings{yoo2008paragraphs,
  title = {{Paragraphs as episodes: distinguishing paragraphs in Biblical Hebrew narrative text on the basis of linguistic devices}},
  author = {Yoo, Chang-Keol},
  booktitle = {SUNScholar (Stellenbosch University)},
  year = {2008},
  url = {https://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/2818}
}

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