One aspect of Discourse Analysis is examining how the logical “sense” relations between clauses are built up to form the flow and meaning of a discourse. These relations are always present in coherent discourse, and they are, at times signaled by linguistic devices known as discourse markers.
It has been proposed that at the clause level in biblical Hebrew prose, waw serves as a discourse marker signaling a “cohesive, though undefined, relationship between two units, [while] asyndeton stands as the unmarked option” (Jason S. DeRouchie, “Waw and Asyndeton as Guides to Macrostructure in Biblical Hebrew Prose,” in Like Nails Firmly Fixed: Essays on the Text and Language of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, Presented to Peter J. Gentry on His Retirement, ed. Jonathan Kiel, Phillip Marshall, and John A. Cook [Leuven: Peeters, 2023], 136). It is further argued that signaling a coordinate relationship is the core meaning of waw. The many other meanings commonly attributed to waw are taken to be implied by the context, and not by waw; that is the English discourse markers used to translate waw do not relate the meaning of waw but explicate the sense relation between clauses that are marked as coordinate by waw (Richard C. Steiner, “Does the Biblical Hebrew Conjunction -ו Have Many Meanings, One Meaning, Or No Meaning at All?,” Journal of Biblical Literature 119, 2 [2000]: 249–6).
Much of the work exploring the use of waw and asyndeton as well as the broader use of discourse markers has focused on biblical Hebrew prose, but discourse markers are not examined as frequently when discussing Hebrew poetry. But if the core meaning of waw as a discourse marker is to signal coordination, it stands to reason that it will have this same function in poetry and should therefore be used to help understand the relation between poetic lines in Hebrew.
Now, Elizabeth Robar has suggested that only the first line of a poetic unit will conform to normal rules and patterns in Hebrew prose, so it is possible that waw may only retain its discourse function in the first line of poetic units (Elizabeth Robar, The Verb and the Paragraph in Biblical Hebrew: A Cognitive-Linguistic Approach, Studies in Semitic Languages and Linguistics, Volume 78 [Leiden ; Boston: Brill, 2015], 141). Therefore, this paper will argue that in poetry, as in prose, waw is a discourse marker indicating coordination and asyndeton is unmarked with regard to coordination. The paper will also demonstrate that the relative frequency of asyndeton indicating coordination (as opposed to waw) remains consistent even though asyndeton tends to occur higher in poetry than in prose.
As a result of this paper, it is hoped that readers will further understand the pragmatic use of discourse markers in Biblical Hebrew to structure an author’s argument. It is also hoped that readers will gain greater understanding of the application of Discourse Analysis to Biblical Hebrew Poetry.