Questions Raised by the Claims in the Literature Review Summary

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4.1.5 Questions Raised by the Claims in the Literature Review

The survey of scholarship in the sections on Traditional, Descriptive, and Textlinguistic approaches stimulated other questions about the function of . The purpose here is to summarize and highlight the questions that are crucial for further understanding of and its various uses and functions. 1 What is the direction of ’s connection in the text? Is the connection to what precedes it, follows it, or both? 2 What is the role of in marking or signaling divisions in a text? 3 Do only certain types of occurrences of qualify for a role in the broader narrative organization or is there something about as a verb that gives every occurrence a peculiar role? 4 Is the presence or absence of with particular clause elements involved in the information structure of a biblical Hebrew text? In other words, does it indicate different levels of prominence or salience? 5 If ’s primary role is in the temporal organization of a text, does a concept like Reference Time clarify its function? 6 To what extent is the function of governed by the form of the verbal element which immediately follows it? 7 Does aspect play a role in determining the function of ? 8 What are the implications of labeling as a “macro-syntactic marker”? If this is ’s function, what is being marked? These questions and others like them have motivated the research presented in this study. The particular object of study is , but in a broader sense, this study is probing fundamental issues of how one understands the interconnected nature of narrative and all the varied linguistic elements which make it work. just happens to be the specific item under the microscope. 64

4.1.6 Summary

Van der Merwe’s analysis of 1 Samuel highlights the complexity of ’s usage in the Hebrew Bible. Even though the corpus provided by 1 Samuel seems quite extensive, there are many questions about the use of that remain unanswered. There are also several aspects to van der Merwe’s analysis that need clarification. He states that “ signals that the reference time of a state of affairs is that of the current reference time of a preceding temporally anchored event or events” and that also “allows the updating or specification of the reference time of an event by confirming that the current reference time of the construction with is a preceding temporally anchored event or state of affairs” van der Merwe 1999, 113. These claims need to be evaluated after careful examination of the data.

4.2 The Scope of this Study