Endo, The Verbal System of Classical Hebrew in the Joseph Story:

47 For Exter Blokland, the fact that some episodes are not introduced by a text- syntactical marker like + temporal expression, leads to the conclusion that subject matter or content determines the episode boundaries. This seriously argues against being assigned any unique function in marking episode boundaries. If content is really the final arbiter of episode boundaries, the occurrence of becomes quite inconsequential in terms of marking that boundary. The issue that faces the textlinguist at this point is to investigate what has motivated in some episode boundaries and not in others. This requires further analysis and will be commented on in Chapter 10.

3.4.11 Endo, The Verbal System of Classical Hebrew in the Joseph Story:

An Approach from Discourse Analysis, 1996 Endo’s study also deals with the function of in marking episodes or segments of a text. The influence of Talstra, Schneider, and Niccacci is clear in the following comment by Endo: Talstra notes that also is used to mark the main segments of a narrative, but also to distinguish the main story from the “embedded stories.” Or, as Schneider and Niccacci explain, this verbal form may function as a “macro-syntactic sign” i.e. a marker of the relationships among segments of the text.. Endo 1996, 175-76 11 In 3.4.8 Talstra was cited as having commented that distinguishes the main story from the embedded stories. In similar fashion, Endo comments as follows: Thus, the difference between the ordinary unmarked conditionaltemporal sentence and the or construction may involve the following two 11 Endo cites Talstra 1978, 173; Schneider 1974, 265-66; and Niccacci 1990, 33, 48- 60. 48 points: Firstly, in the latter case, because of this cleft construction, both thematic and focal prominence are given to the temporal circumstance. In this sense the function of this construction differs also from that of the simple temporal clause with the temporal particle where the temporal clause simply functions as a subordinate clause. Endo 1996, 178 Endo’s use of the terms thematic and focal prominence is evidence of influence from certain conceptual trends within Linguistics, but the terms are used without clearly defining what thematic or focal prominence means. The term emphasis Muraoka 1983 resonates at an intuitive level—it is easy to sense or recognize that a text consists of information that varies in its relative prominence—but it is very difficult to precisely define how emphasis or prominence actually functions in communication. Notice the following comment by Endo: Secondly, when the impersonal verb as a sequential form with the inherent meaning such as “happen” or “become” is combined with a temporal circumstance especially with the particle, it emphasizes the temporal setting of the incident with various senses depending on the following particle. Endo 1996, 179 The function of emphasizing the temporal setting is identified by Endo as a function of , but this raises the question of what this emphasis means or indicates to the listener or reader. Also, what are the implications for the temporal clauses that do not include ? These issues will be dealt with in Chapter 10.

3.4.12 Hatav, The Semantics of Aspect and Modality, 1997