Proverbial poetry: its settings and syntax

non-verbal clauses), between 1 and 4 constituents, and

between 2 and 5 units, with no constituent composed of

more than 4 units.³ He places his findings into a

convenient matrix which shows that all lines have no

____________________

¹J. Barr, review of Hebrew Verse Structure, by M.

O'Connor, JJS 34 (1983):118.

²O'Connor, Hebrew Verse Structure, p. 68. Three

pages of his book are extremely important in understanding

this work; they are pp. 68, 138, and 319. Also vid.

Kugel's summary in The Idea of Biblical Poetry, pp.

315-23.

³O'Connor, Hebrew Verse Structure, p. 87.
"fewer than the leftmost or more than the rightmost number

on any level."¹

Clause predicators 0 1 2 3
Constituents 1 2 3 4

Units 2 3 4 5

This matrix should be read that no line may have fewer

than one or more than three clause predicators; or it may

be a non-verbal clause. Each line contains no less than

one constituent (VP, NP, etc.), with no more than four per

line; and no less than two units (V, N, Adj, etc.), with

no more than five per line. This provides a structural

description which accounts for the regularity in line

length and also provides parameters for understanding the

limits of variation. O'Connor then, through a process of

combinations and permutations, generates the configuration

of all 1,225 lines in his corpus. Next, he takes each

line permutation and gets a frequency count, in order to

gain intuition concerning which lines occur with more

regularity in the text.2 For example, he gives the three

most frequent line types (Class 1) as:

13. 1 clause, 2 constituents, 2 units/ 245 cases

14. 1 clause, 2 constituents, 3 units/ 229 cases

____________________

¹Ibid., p. 138.

²Ibid., pp. 317-19. Here he gives the number of

times that each line type occurred. This chart will

provide a means of comparison after the analysis of the

proverbial corpus is performed.

17. 1 clause, 3 constituents, 3 units/ 275 cases

749 cases

This provides a standard by which the proverbial corpus

may be measured. Subsequently, O'Connor maps out his line

types #1-35 onto a "constellation conspectus," which lists

the clause types according to grammatical parts of speech

(VSO [verb, subject, object]) and the line types across

the top by giving the frequency of occurrences in the

chart.

The "Constellation conspectus" is the point at

which a comparison may be made to Collins' system. The

following example will easily demonstrate what O'Connor

does in his system:¹

Total #17 #18 #19

VSO 9 8 1 0

VSP 26 23 3 0

VPS 22 16 5 1

VOP 48 40 8 0

VPO 38 32 5 1
He also tracks the number of units in noun phrase

constituents as follows:²

Total 2nd con np 3rd con np

1u 2u 1u 2u (u=units)

VSO 9 9 0 8 1

VSP 26 24 2 25 1

VPS 22 21 1 16 6

VOP 48 45 3 43 5

VPO 38 37 1 32 6

____________________

¹Ibid., p. 335. Cf. pp. 327, 331, 333, 344, 349,

and 353.

²Ibid., p. 336. Cf. also pp. 325, 327, 331, 333,

344, 348-49, 353, and 357.

An example of the counting of units, constituents

and clauses may help clarify how this data is generated

from Proverbs 10:1:
אָב יְשַׂמַּח חָכָם בֵּן

(father) (makes happy) (wise) (son)

A wise son makes a father happy,
וֹ אִמ תּוּגַת כְּסִיל בֵן וּ

(his)(mother) (grief) (foolish) (son) (but)

but a foolish son is grief to his mother.
Each line is composed of a single clause (the first is a

verbal clause [clause predicate=1]; the second is a

non-verbal clause [clause predicate=0]). There are two

nominal constituents in each line as well (NP=wise-son,

N=father and NP=foolish-son, NP=grief-of-his-mother). In

10:1a there are two units in the first noun phrase

(wise-son) and one unit in the second (father) resulting

in the configuration of 10:1a being 1 clause, 3

constituents, and 4 units. The first noun phrase in 10:1b

has two units (foolish-son) and the second constituent has

two units (grief-of, his-mother; note the pronominal

suffix is not counted as a unit). The configuration of

10:1b is 0 clause, 2 constituents and 4 units. Other

information that will have to be tracked will be a

grammatical configuration (10:1a SVO; 10:1b SPr) and the

size of each nominal phrase (10:1a S=2 units; O=1 unit;

____________________

¹The normal abbreviations are S=subject, V=verb,

O=object, Pr=predicate of verbless clause, P=preposition,

A=adverb.
10:1b S=2 units; Pr=2 units). Having tabulated this data

from the 348 lines of the corpus, a comparison will be

able to be made with O'Connor's statistics. Because of

the limited size of the proverbial corpus, only major

tendencies of high frequency will be of any true

significance when there is no further proof.¹ O'Connor's

general results are as follows:
The clause constraint allows between zero and three

clauses in a line, but 898 lines (75%) have one

clause; the other three possibilities are much less

frequently used. One hundred and thirty eight lines

(11%) have no clauses, 157 lines (13%) have two, and 7

[0.6%] have three.

Of the range of constituent groupings, two

dominate: there are 571 2-constituent lines (48%) and

485 3-constituent lines (40%). There are, in

contrast, 98 1-constituent lines (8%) and only 46 with

4 constituents (4%). A majority of lines, 690 (57%)

have three units; 298 (25%) have two units, 190 (16%)

have four, while only 22 (2%) have five.²
He also ranks the usual order of nominal elements as

S-O-P-A and notes that the commonest word order is verb

initial (two-thirds of the clauses).³ Nominal sentences

were not frequent enough in his corpus to be able to make

definitive statements, although SPr was found 43 times and

PrS 34 times.⁴ These results will be related to the data

____________________

¹The reason why more lines were not examined is

that the difficulty of the tagmemic aspect rendered such an

increase extremely difficult. O'Connor's system by itself

is quite easily and quickly employed.

²O'Connor, Hebrew Verse Structure, p. 316.

³Ibid.

⁴Ibid., p. 333.
from the proverbial corpus and appropriate comparisons and

contrasts made.

Besides the tropes of coloration (binomination,

coordination, and combination) and gapping, which will not

be treated here, the trope of matching will be a

phenomenon which will be carefully scrutinized. Matching

(which is the same as Berlin's syntactic repetition) is

defined to be the identity of constituent or unit

structure in juxtaposed lines and may run from two to

seven lines in length. Basically it calls for a syntactic

repetition (VS/VS or VS/SV; VSO/VSO or SVO/OVS, etc.).

About one third of O'Connor's corpus exhibits this trope.

This feature, as well as Berlin's morphological repetition

and parallelism, will be monitored under the designations

of isomorphism (repetition) and homomorphism (grammatical

parallelism).

Collins' Types, Forms, and Arrangements
O'Connor's constraints have provided a description

and syntactical definition of the line; likewise, Collin's

system of line types will provide a workable and

understandable hierarchy for the specific syntactic

analysis of line types.¹ Collins designed this system to

____________________

¹Collins, Line-Forms in Hebrew Poetry, p. 7. A

summary and brief explanation of his system may be found in

Collins, "Line-Forms in Hebrew Poetry," pp. 228-44 or

Cynthia Miller, "Line-Forms in Hebrew Poetry: A Linguistic

Analysis of Job 19" (Paper for Hebrew Exegesis of Job
be simple, consistent and comprehensive. He accomplishes

the first two, but misses the last one, as may be seen in

a comparison of his line forms to O'Connor's more

comprehensive list of constraints.¹ He begins with four

basic sentence types, which are:
A S V

B S V A/P

C S V O

D S V O A/P²

With these four basic sentences in mind, he goes on to

define the following four basic line-types:

I. The line contains only one Basic Sentence.
II. The line contains two Basic Sentences of the

same kind, in such a way that all the

constituents in the first half-line are repeated

in the second, though not necessarily in the

same order.
III. The line contains two Basic Sentences of the

same kind, but only some of the constituents

of the first half-line are repeated in the

second.
IV. The line contains two different Basic Sentences.

Thus combining the basic sentence types with the basic

line types results in the following specific line-types:

____________________

Class, Grace Theological Seminary, 1980), pp. 1-44.

¹Collins, Line-Forms in Hebrew Poetry, p. 22. He

does not cover multiple clause predication.

²Collins, Line-Forms in Hebrew Poetry, p. 23. Note

the change in abbreviations (Collins' NP¹=S, NP²=O, and

M[verbal modifier]=A/P [A=adverbial, P=prepositional

phrase]) to conform with O'Connor's, which are more

syntactically descriptive.

I A, I B, I C, I D.

II A, II B, II C, II D.

III A, III B, III C, III D.

IV A/B, IV A/C, IV A/D (and so on).¹
Some comments are in order in an attempt to integrate

Collins' and O'Connor's approaches. First, when Collins

uses the term line, he means a whole bi-colon, but

O'Connor designates a line as one-half of the bi-colon.

Second, Collins' line type II is close to what O'Connor

describes in his trope of matching (Berlin's repetitive

syntax). Line type III includes O'Connor's trope of

gapping, which, if the constituents match except for the

gapped terms, he accepts as a form of matching, while

Collins separates them (O'Connor is more deep structure

oriented and is Collins more surface structure oriented at

this point). Collins' fourth line-type is Berlin's

syntactic parallelism.¹ These parameters result in the

following table which summarizes the slots into which

Collins groups his specific line-types.

____________________

¹Ibid., pp. 23-24.

²One of the initial frustrations of this writer was

the lack of standardization of poetic terminology (stich,

hemi-stich, colon, bi-colon, line, verse, etc.). One has

only to wrestle with Geller's work to realize the problem

and the need for the standardization of abbreviations and

the removal--or at least the careful definition--of jargon

in a way that is lucid and memorable.

SUMMARY OF SPECIFIC LINE-TYPES

I A S + V

I B S + V + A/P

I C S + V + O

I D S + V + O + A/P

_________________________________________________________

II A S + V -- S + V

II B S + V + A/P -- S + V + A/P

II C S + V + O -- S + V + O

II D S + V + O + A/P -- S + V + O + A/P

__________________________________________________________

III A S + V -- S

S + V -- V

III B S + V + A/P -- S + V

S + V + A/P -- S + A/P

S + V + A/P -- V + A/P

S + V + A/P -- S

S + V + A/P -- V

S + V + A/P -- A/P

III C S + V + O -- S + V

S + V + O -- S + O

S + V + O -- V + O

S + V + O -- S

S + V + O -- V

S + V + O -- O

III D (S) + V + O + A/P-- V + O

V + O + A/P-- V + A/P

V + O + A/P-- O + A/P

V + O + A/P-- V

V + O + A/P-- O

V + O + A/P-- A/P

(S is normally omitted in III D)

_________________________________________________________

IV A/B S + V -- S + V + A/P

A/C S + V -- S + V + O

A/D S + V -- S + V + O + A/P
IV B/A S + V + A/P-- S + V

B/C S + V + A/P-- S + V + O

B/D S + V + A/P-- S + V + O + A/P
IV C/A S + V + O -- S + V

C/B S + V + O -- S + V + A/P

C/D S + V + O -- S + V + O + A/P

IV D/A S + V + O + A/P-- S + V

D/B S + V + O + A/P-- S + V + A/P

D/C S + V + O + A/P-- S + V + O

This "Summary of Specific Line-Types"¹ was generated from

the four "Basic Sentences" (A = S V, B = S V A/P, C = S V

O, D = S V O A/P) and the four general line types (I is a

bicolon and contains only one basic sentence; II contains

two basic sentences of the same kind [syntactic matching];

III contains two basic sentences of the same kind with

missing constituents [gapping]; IV is a bi-colon and

contains two different basic sentences).

Collins then adds another set of four categories

to move from line-types to line-forms. This next category

simply monitors the presence or absence of an explicit

subject.

i) with S in both cola (hemi-stichs)

ii) with no S in either cola

iii) with S in the first cola only

iv) with S in the second cola only²

Finally, returning to each basic sentence type (A, B, C,

D), each basic sentence will have a certain number of

permutations which constitute its specific arrangement.

Thus for example:

Line-Type 1 A i has two different arrangements:

1= S V

2= V S

Line-Type 1 B i has six different arrangements:

1= S V A/P

____________________

¹Collins, Line-Forms in Hebrew Poetry, p. 25. This

is Collins' chart, with the modification in abbreviations

to make it fit conventional descriptors.

²Ibid., p. 162. Thus, for example, each line will

be labeled as IV A/B i or IV C/B ii, depending on whether

or not the subject is present.

2= S A/P V

3= V S A/P

4= V A/P S

5= A/P S V

6= A/P V S¹

Thus, a huge number of line types may be generated from a

fairly simple scheme of four basic sentences (A, B, C, D),

and four line-types (I, II, III, IV), four ways of

recognizing whether or not the subject is explicit (i, ii,

iii, iv), and specific arrangements which are simply

permutations of the ordering of the elements of the four

basic sentences. Thus, Collins examines his 1,943 line

prophetic corpus and designates each line according to his

nomenclature [e.g., III D i) 2 where 2 is the number of

the arrangement]. This provides a rather easily-used tool

for monitoring and sorting the syntax of the poetic lines.

He takes the idea that a few simple forms generate an

"infinite" number of possible line forms from Chomsky's

transformational grammar.2

It will be one of the goals of this study to

examine the proverbial corpus and employ this model, which

will provide a base for comparison of line types. The

____________________

¹Ibid., pp. 58, 60 with appropriate adaptations.

²Ibid., pp. 32-39.
atomistic, non-strophic, bi-colonic nature of Proverbs

provides an opportunity for looking at bald bi-cola which

may render clues as to the nature of the line itself. One

must not forget, however, that such lines are proverbs;

hence, genre considerations also may be at work in shaping

the line. An interesting footnote to Collins' study is

his associating to specific structures certain types of

semantic sets, which he suggests are inherent in the

line-type.¹ Lastly, he perceives what he calls

"interweaving" where the semantic content matches

constituents in different syntactic categories; that is, a

subject of the first colon may match semantically the

object of the second. This phenomenon of semantic-

syntactic "interweaving" has been observed in Proverbs and

will be noted when appropriate.² An example may be seen

in Proverbs 10:1, where "makes glad" (verb) is paralleled

to the construct noun "grief of his mother."
Resultant Model
The resultant model from the meshing of O'Connor's

and Collins' systems may be seen in the following

____________________

¹Collins, Line-Forms in Hebrew Poetry, pp. 240-49.

²Ibid., p. 231. This writer was delighted to find

a fitting term (i.e., interweaving) for this phenomenon

which had been observed, although somewhat rarely, in

Proverbs.

illustration from Proverbs 10:1.
10:1a O V S

אָב יְשַׂמַּח־ חָכָם בֵּן

father happy wise son

1 unit 1 unit 2 units

1 constituent 1 constituent 1 constituent

1 Clause predicator

10:1b Pr S

וֹ אִמּ תּוּגַת כְּסִיל בֵן וּ

his mother grief foolish son but

2 units 2 units

1 constutent 1 constituent



0 Clause Predicators
O'Connor's system results in:

10:1a 1 clause predication, 3 constituents, 4 units

10:1b 0 clause predication, 2 constituents, 4 units

Thus his formulae are:

10:1a 1 3 4

10:1b 0 2 4

Collins' system results in the following line-types:

10:1 S V O -- S Pr

The S V O stich (10:1a) is a basic sentence type C. The S

Pr stich (10:1b) is basic sentence type not included in

his initial model but later designated as "nom." which

becomes a fifth basic sentence type.¹ Thus, Proverbs 10:1

____________________

¹Ibid., pp. 215-16. Note the incorrect cross-

reference given on p. 48, n. 45.

is classified as: IV C/nom.: i)1,a. Notice the

modification in the representation 1,a which gives the

arrangement of 10:1a (SVO) as 1 and the arrangement of

10:1b (SPr) as "a" ("b" = [Pr S] ordering). One of the

complications is that, each line type I, II, III, IV,

generates a different set of arrangements thereby

complicating the system. It is the specific arrangements,

however, which allow one to apply the system to actual

texts and shows one of the weaknesses of this very

productive approach in that it does not specify distinctly

all arrangements.¹

The one function of this study, then, will be to

utilize O'Connor's constraints and Collins' line-types to

tabulate how the proverbial corpus compares or contrasts

with the results of these two systems. For comparative

____________________

¹Ibid., p. 168. Note for IV C/B: i)3 there are

three possible arrangements which are lumped under one

heading. A double numerical system may solve this problem.

The first number would exactly specify the arrangement of

the first stich and the second number the second stich. It

is interesting that on pp. 216f. he does not even give an

arrangement specification for nominal sentences. Note that

this system also does not account for four constituent line

types, thus demonstrating the superiority of O'Connor's

approach and the need to further extend Collins' approach.

Collins does develop an arrangement system for gapped

orderings via an alphabetic sequence: a = V O; b = O V;

c = V A/P; d = A/P V; e = O A/P; f = A/P O; g = V; h = O;

j = A/P. Again, he does not include four constituent

clauses which are gapped to three. Another problem with

his handling of arrangements may be seen in the

proliferation of arrangement permutations for II C: i)

type, for which he generates 36 arrangement types. This

could have been avoided by specifying the order of each

stich seperately (vid. pp. 109-12).

purposess this may be helpful. The poetry of Proverbs may

now be compared with O'Connor's early poetry corpus (over

1,200 lines) and Collins' poetry of the prophets (over

1,900 lines). It is to be expected that genre,

particularly in Proverbs, may also put further constraints

on the structure of the line.

Conclusion
This chapter has sought to show that one must

appreciate poetic features of equivalence and difference

on three major levels: phonological, semantical, and

syntactical.¹ Principles of phonetic equivalence may be

exhibited in alliteration, consonance, assonance,

paronomasia, or rhyme. The elusive Hebrew meter may also

reflect phonological equivalences. Onomatopoeia may use a

similarity between sound and sense to flavor the text.

On the level of semantics, equivalence is evinced

in repetitions, the various types of semantic

parallelisms, word dyads, chiasms, inclusios and

compensations. Features of semantic variation may be seen

in double duty usages, gapping, repetitional variation

techniques from different stems and parts of speech,

____________________

¹This writer is well aware of the new burgeoning

fields of pragmalinguistics or pragmatics, socio-

linguistics and psycho-linguistics, all of which presently

are being developed and which will undoubtedly further help

in the analysis of the poetic moment (vid. the next chapter

on linguistics).

as well as in the way in which the word pairs are

connected (as parallel members, construct or conjunct

relationships). Note that paronomasia is an interweaving

of phonetic sameness onto a semantic difference.

Syntactically, equivalences may be seen in the

tropes of matching and grammatical parallelism (i.e.,

syntactical and/or morphological parallelism). Variation

may be reflected in syntactical or morphological shifts,

which result in parallelism or non-parallelism rather than

in a repetitional match. This study will not scrutinize