Classification and Analysis of the Biblical Verb with the Aid of the Computer: Topics in the Book of Amos

Abstract

This article presents an analysis of the function of the Biblical verb from a textlinguistic (Discourse Grammar) approach: the verb forms in the book of Amos have been classified and analyzed taking into account not the function of the verb in a clause or in a sentence, but its textual function in a particular discourse type. The different verb forms and clause structures have been divided in two groups - narration and discourse - depending on the kind of text in which they occur. From a methodological point of view, an important characteristic of the work carried out for this analysis is the creation of a linguistic data base with most of the morphosyntactic information of the text object of study, the book of Amos. This computerized data base and the software used for its analysis are a useful tool for the treatment of a great amount of information and provide rapid and reliable results. The aim of this article is to introduce the most important results of a M.A. dissertation presented in 1998 in the Complutensian University of Madrid, entitled "Verbal Syntax in the Book of Amos." This kind of work, based on a textlinguistic approach and using computerized databases as the main tool of analysis, has also been developed in my Ph.D. thesis, "Verbal Syntax in Pre-exilic Minor Prophets," which includes new elements of research and studies the verb forms in all of the pre-exilic minor prophets.