From: Wayne Leman (wleman@mcn.net)
Date: Tue Apr 11 2000 - 20:21:31 EDT
<x-charset iso-8859-1>Mike asked:
>The book:
> Man and Message, A Guide to Meaning-based Text Analysis,
> by Kathleen Callow.
>
> This book tells in plain language all about how a linguist can
> examine a text and describe how it was put together, what it means,
> and what it's for. It painlessly explains the basic concepts
> of linguistic semantics, pragmatics, discourse analysis, and
> grammar-meaning vs. grammar-use. It shows by principle, example,
> and style how the receiver of a message is able to know what its
> sender intended. 1998 400 pp.
>
>is available from SIL. Do you know whether this book would be good
>for a non-linguist who has read "Linguistics for students of New
>Testament Greek", by Black and who is currently enjoying "Linguistics
>and NT Interpretation", edited by Black?
That's a tough question, Mike. I think the answer is "yes" in your case,
since you've been able to get something out of Dr. Black's books. If it is
possible for you, I recommend that you try to borrow Callow's book via ILL
(Inter-Library Loan) to see if it has what appeals to you. It's quite
different in content and approach from Black's books. I'm a nuts-and-bolts
linguist and Bible translator. For me, Callow's book is written with more
generalities than I prefer as a nuts-and-bolts down-to-earth
just-let-me-deal-with-the-data person. But I recognize that these
generalities are very important and set the groundwork for the more detailed
work. Callow's book seems to me to deal more with the theory of how people
form messages and communicate them than with the specifics of how messages
are encoded in individual languages. I forget the price of Callow's book,
but I think it seemed a bit pricey to me, not nearly as much as some of the
books from European publishers, but still around $30 or $40 paperbook, I
think. So, caveat emptor!
>
>I am very interested in learning to better determine the structure of
>the text. Since I think 'the structure is the container of the
>meaning', I thought the above book would help me meet my goal.
>
>What are your thoughts and opinions, if you have any in this regard?
My own thoughts are that you would do better with a more down-to-earth
example-oriented book like that co-authored by Callow's husband, John Callow
and the late Dr. John Beekman, Translating the Word of God (TWOG). This is
still in print and available from the SIL website:
Go to the Translation section from the main page, then work your way through
the Publications materials.
TWOG has the advantage of using many exx. from the Bible, esp. the NT, and
many of the translation issues raised are due to differences between Loine
Greek and other languages, including English, into which one wishes to
translate the Greek.
>
>Thanks very much for any help you might provide.
>
>BTW, in my copy of "Linguistics for students of NT Greek", the last
>chapter is a discourse analysis of Philippians. Were you thinking of
>the right book when you said:
>
>> The final chapter David Alan Black's 1995 edition of his book,
>> Linguistics For Students of New Testament Greek is on diagramming the
>> discourse structure of the original text. Dr. Black's approach is
>> essentially the same as the SSA diagrams.
Yes, that's the book I was thinking of. The final chapter indeed does deal
with the discourse structure of Philippians to illustrate the SSA approach
to diagramming the original text.
I hope this helps,
Wayne
--- Wayne Leman Bible translation site: http://bibletranslation.lookscool.com/--- B-Greek home page: http://sunsite.unc.edu/bgreek You are currently subscribed to b-greek as: [cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu] To unsubscribe, forward this message to leave-b-greek-329W@franklin.oit.unc.edu To subscribe, send a message to subscribe-b-greek@franklin.oit.unc.edu
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