427 important aspect of narrative. Full analysis of the temporal organization of the biblical
Hebrew text is, however, beyond the scope of the current study.
10.2 Pertinent Theoretical Concepts
Before proceeding with the consideration of the discourse-pragmatic uses of ,
there are certain theoretical concepts that merit further discussion.
10.2.1 Macrosyntactic
First of all, the notion macrosyntactic needs further clarification. Typically, macrosyntactic is used to refer to the function of certain items or markers in a text, but its
scope needs to be clearly defined. The term macrosyntactic undoubtedly came into existence to make a distinction between “smaller” levels of analysis, typically referred to
as just syntax—the analysis of phrase, clause, or sentence patterns—and “larger” areas of analysis beyond the sentence. This type of distinction is fine, but the problem resides in
the failure to clearly define exactly what macrosyntactic refers to. Some authors appear to use macrosyntactic to refer to anything interclausal, but others use the term to refer to
indicators or markers of more global textual organization. The traditional and descriptive grammars typically recognize that
plays some type of interclausal role. The discussion of whether
is more closely linked to what precedes or to what follows demonstrates that its analysis is a matter of interclausal
syntax. The term macrosyntactic, however, was brought into use in the midst of this awareness of
playing some type of role in signaling connections across clause
428 boundaries. In fact, most of the references to a macrosyntactic function of
deal with issues of text-segmentation or narrative organization.
In the model implemented here, the Morpho-Syntactic Orientation discussed in 5.2.2 encompasses all levels of morphosyntax up to and including interclausal
phenomena. At the level of morphology, linguistic systems are much more tightly rule- governed than they are farther away from the nuclear constructions. As one moves into
the “higher” levels of textual organization, there is greater flexibility. The threshold in the model implemented here is at the interclausal level. This does not imply, however,
that textual organization is random beyond the clause, but there is less predictability due to the increased variables to which communication is context-sensitive. Longacre’s
notion of a text profile 1996, 2 is important to consider here. A profile is not intended to predict every detail of a text and should, therefore, not be interpreted as a rigid
template. The context-sensitive nature of language and communication means that text is emergent. A profile, then, is what develops as one travels through the text, encountering
its contours. Journeys through similar texts of comparable genre will reveal that they share certain features and also differ in certain respects.
In summary, the main issue with macrosyntactic is its lack of precision. Therefore, the label “macrosyntactic marker” is deemed too imprecise to describe the
functions of . The preference here is to speak of the discourse-pragmatic functions of
. The terms morpho-syntactic and discourse-pragmatic make a clear distinction between the traditional realm of syntax and the realm of textual function and
organization. Also, because a linguistic item may function both morphosyntactically in
429 its local context and discourse-pragmatically in the global textual context, the term
discourse-pragmatic allows direct reference to these functions.
10.2.2 Discourse Markers
