Psalm 6 Macrosyntax
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Psalm 6/Macrosyntax
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The sound of my weeping
Psalm 6
Please note: Resources for Psalm 6 are in the process of being reformatted for visual consistency and improved functionality.
Macrosyntax
Macrosyntax Diagram
| Macrosyntax legend | |
|---|---|
| Vocatives | Vocatives are indicated by purple text. |
| Discourse marker | Discourse markers (such as כִּי, הִנֵּה, לָכֵן) are indicated by orange text. |
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The scope governed by the discourse marker is indicated by a dashed orange bracket connecting the discourse marker to its scope. |
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The preceding discourse grounding the discourse marker is indicated by a solid orange bracket encompassing the relevant clauses. |
| Subordinating conjunction | The subordinating conjunction is indicated by teal text. |
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Subordination is indicated by a solid teal bracket connecting the subordinating conjunction with the clause to which it is subordinate. |
| Coordinating conjunction | The coordinating conjunction is indicated by blue text. |
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Coordination is indicated by a solid blue line connecting the coordinating clauses. |
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Coordination without an explicit conjunction is indicated by a dashed blue line connecting the coordinated clauses. |
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Marked topic is indicated by a black dashed rounded rectangle around the marked words. |
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The scope of the activated topic is indicated by a black dashed bracket encompassing the relevant clauses. |
| Marked focus or thetic sentence | Marked focus (if one constituent) or thetic sentences[1] are indicated by bold text. |
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Frame setters[2] are indicated by a solid gray rounded rectangle around the marked words. |
| [blank line] | Discourse discontinuity is indicated by a blank line. |
| [indentation] | Syntactic subordination is indicated by indentation. |
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Direct speech is indicated by a solid black rectangle surrounding all relevant clauses. |
| (text to elucidate the meaning of the macrosyntactic structures) | Within the CBC, any text elucidating the meaning of macrosyntax is indicated in gray text inside parentheses. |
If an emendation or revocalization is preferred, that emendation or revocalization will be marked in the Hebrew text of all the visuals.
| Emendations/Revocalizations legend | |
|---|---|
| *Emended text* | Emended text, text in which the consonants differ from the consonants of the Masoretic text, is indicated by blue asterisks on either side of the emendation. |
| *Revocalized text* | Revocalized text, text in which only the vowels differ from the vowels of the Masoretic text, is indicated by purple asterisks on either side of the revocalization. |
(Click diagram to enlarge)
File:Psalm 006 - Macrosyntax.jpg
- v. 8–9. Vocative "all you who do evil" (כָּל־פֹּעֲלֵי אָוֶן).
- v. 2. The prepositional phrases in your anger (בְּאַפְּךָ) and in your wrath (בַּחֲמָתְךָ) are fronted for marked focus. The psalmist is not requesting that YHWH refrain from discipline per se, but that YHWH refrain from discipline in anger: "Let it not be in your anger that you discipline me!"
- v. 3b. The predicate complement languishing (אֻמְלַל) is fronted for scalar focus.
- v. 4a. The phrase my soul (נַפְשִׁי) is fronted before the verb for marked topic: "and as for my soul (וְנַפְשִׁי), it is very dismayed." In the previous verse (v. 3), he talks about himself generally ("I") and about his bones ("my bones"). Now, in v. 4a he talks about his soul. With this new marked topic comes an expectation of some new information: "and as for my soul..." But this expectation is subverted when the previous line is repeated nearly verbatim—only the situation is intensified (מאֹד). Despite the new topic, the discourse goes nowhere (but down!) and leaves the reader (along with the psalmist) asking, "how long?" (v. 4b).
- Alternatively, the fronting of נַפְשִׁי could be considered an instance of additive focus: "my soul, too (in addition to my bones), has become dismayed."
- Alternatively, Lunn (2006, 234–235) argues that v. 3bβ and v. 4a form a line-pair in which the non-default word order in v. 4a creates a symmetrical pattern with v. 3bβ: A. "dismayed" B. "my bones" // B. "my soul" A. "very dismayed."
- v. 4b. The pronoun you (אַתָּ) is fronted for a contrastive topic shift. As Wendland notes, "the pronoun [you"] (v. 4b) forcefully contrasts with ["my soul"] in the preceding line (v. 4a), as the two protagonists, divine and human, are syntactically placed into prominent opposition" (2019, 231).
- v. 6a. The subject commemoration of you (זִכְרֶךָ) appears at the end of the clause, after the frame setter "in the world of the dead (בַּמָּוֶת), for completive focus.
- v. 6b. The fronting of the phrase in Sheol (בִּשְׁאוֹל) provides spatial orientation as a frame setter, but it is most likely fronted to create a poetic pattern of repetition (see v. 6a).
- v. 7b. We would normally expect the phrase every night (בְכָל־לַיְלָה), which is phonetically heavier, more morphologically complex, and less discourse-accessible than "my bed," to occur at the end of the sentence. The fact that it occurs before the object ("my bed") probably indicates scalar focus: every single night.
- v. 7c. The M-O-V word order in v. 7c creates a symmetrical pattern with the previous line: A. אַשְׂחֶה B. בְכָל־לַיְלָה מִטָּתִי // B. בְּדִמְעָתִי עַרְשִׂי A. אַמְסֶה. In addition to the semantic and morphological correspondences, note the similar sounds between מִטָּתִי ("my bed") and דִמְעָתִי ("my tears"). At the same time, the word order in v. 7c could be related to information structure. The second constituent, "my couch" (עַרְשִׂי), which is already active from the previous clause, could be a fronted topic, and the first constituent, "with my tears" (בְּדִמְעָתִי) could be fronted for marked focus, providing the focal material for the presupposition "drench (אַשְׂחֶה from previous clause) with X."
- v. 8a. The phrase because of vexation (מִכַּעַס) occurs before the subject "my eye," perhaps as marked focus. Alternatively perhaps "my eye" (עֵינִי) has been postposed to create the line-end pattern of 1cs suffixes.
- v. 10b. The double fronting in v. 10b—"YHWH my-prayer will-accept"—creates a pattern of symmetry with previous line/clause.
- v. 2a. The clause-initial vocative YHWH in v. 2a signals the beginning of a conversational turn.
- v. 3. The two vocatives in v. 3, YHWH... YHWH, which are clause-medial, preceding the subordinate כִּי clauses, focus the content of each subordinate clause (Kim 2022, 235-237).
- v. 4b. The vocative YHWH in v. 4b occurs after the fronted constituent, "you" (אַתָּ), in order to "mark the detached element as conversationally significant" (Kim 2022, 227-233), i.e., to create the contrastive topic fronting.
- v. 5a. The vocative YHWH in v. 5a occurs in second position, either for clause-division (Miller 2010, 360-363) or, more likely, to indicate increasing intensity and urgency between the two imperatives.
- v. 9a. The vocative in v. 9a all you who do evil (כָּל־פֹּעֲלֵי אָוֶן) is clause-medial, preceding the subordinate כִּי clause, and it focuses the content of the subordinate clause (Kim 2022, 235-237).
- (There are no notes on discourse markers for this psalm)
- (There are no notes on conjunctions for this psalm)
- ↑ When the entire utterance is new/unexpected, it is a thetic sentence (often called "sentence focus"). See our Creator Guidelines for more information on topic and focus.
- ↑ Frame setters are any orientational constituent – typically, but not limited to, spatio-temporal adverbials – function to "limit the applicability of the main predication to a certain restricted domain" and "indicate the general type of information that can be given" in the clause nucleus (Krifka & Musan 2012: 31-32). In previous scholarship, they have been referred to as contextualizing constituents (see, e.g., Buth (1994), “Contextualizing Constituents as Topic, Non-Sequential Background and Dramatic Pause: Hebrew and Aramaic evidence,” in E. Engberg-Pedersen, L. Falster Jakobsen and L. Schack Rasmussen (eds.) Function and expression in Functional Grammar. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 215-231; Buth (2023), “Functional Grammar and the Pragmatics of Information Structure for Biblical Languages,” in W. A. Ross & E. Robar (eds.) Linguistic Theory and the Biblical Text. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 67-116), but this has been conflated with the function of topic. In brief: sentence topics, belonging to the clause nucleus, are the entity or event about which the clause provides a new predication; frame setters do not belong in the clause nucleus and rather provide a contextual orientation by which to understand the following clause.