--- title: "Speech act theory and the performative language of lament in the individual Psalms — Idialu 2026" description: "The full text is not in the library and the abstract could not be fetched (the article page returned nothing, the index refused); this card rests on the…" authors: ["Raphael Akhijemen Idialu", "Princess Omovrigho Idialu"] year: 2026 venue: "International Journal of Arts Languages Linguistics and Literary Studies" source: "https://doi.org/10.4314/jolls.v15i3.4" doi: "10.4314/jolls.v15i3.4" licence: "CC BY-NC-ND (per OpenAlex/publisher; International Journal of Arts Languages Linguistics and Literary Studies)" licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/" summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License" canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/idialu-2026-speech-act-theory-performative-language/" --- [Elamur Research](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/idialu-2026-speech-act-theory-performative-language/) [home](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/) / [2026](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2026/page/9/) / Speech act theory and the performative language of lament in the individual Psalms of complaint # Speech act theory and the performative language of lament in the individual Psalms of complaint **Authors:** Idialu (full author list not retrieved) · **Year:** 2026 · **Venue:** International Journal of Arts, Languages, Linguistics and Literary Studies (AJOL) **Link:** [ajol.info/index.php/jolls/article/view/337773](https://www.ajol.info/index.php/jolls/article/view/337773) · **Licence:** [CC BY-NC-ND 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) — cited only [**0** citations](https://openalex.org/works?filter=cites:W7217687210) OpenAlex, 2026-10-14 · [International Journal of Arts Languages Linguistics and Literary Studies](https://openalex.org/S5407054724) · [licence](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) - [Publisher's page](https://doi.org/10.4314/jolls.v15i3.4) - [PDF](https://www.ajol.info/index.php/jolls/article/download/337773/317402) - [DOI 10.4314/jolls.v15i3.4](https://doi.org/10.4314/jolls.v15i3.4) - [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W7217687210) **Authors (2)** 1. [Raphael Akhijemen Idialu](https://openalex.org/A5018449801) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5538-7319) · [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/114453110) · h 1 · 5 citations · 11 works 2. [Princess Omovrigho Idialu](https://openalex.org/A5078549101) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7722-8981) · [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/147802415) · h 1 · 5 citations · 10 works Citations and author metrics: OpenAlex, 2026-10-14; authors with the same name are not always told apart. ## What it is about The full text is not in the library and the abstract could not be fetched (the article page returned nothing, the index refused); this card rests on the title alone, and its ideas are provisional. By its title, the article applies speech act theory to the individual lament psalms, treating their language (complaint, petition, confession of trust, vow of praise) as performative: saying the words does something, such as lodging a complaint before God or binding the speaker to a vow. ## For Mova - I1. The lament's parts map onto `prag` acts Mova already has or could have: complaint (assertive with negative polarity addressed to God), petition (directive), confession of trust (assertive, positive), vow (commissive). Within the Torah the closest material is the prayers and complaints in direct speech (Gen 32:10–13, Ex 5:22–23, Num 11:11–15, Num 14:13–19, Deut 9:26–29): check that the current rules give these acts and tally the sequence of acts per prayer. - I2. Mark performative utterances (where the speech is the act: blessing, curse, vow, oath with qatal of the "performative perfect", e.g. נָתַתִּי "I hereby give") as their own act in `prag`, distinct from report; see the Andrason 2012 card on the performative qatal for the form side. I1 is a check on `tools/macula/src/prag.rs` output for a short list of Torah prayers, reported in [languages/hbo/09-discourse.md](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/hbo/09-discourse/) (genres, politeness). I2 is a candidate act value in `prag` and a point in `06-verb.md` (qatal). The Psalms themselves are outside our trees. 📚 Shelves 2[Arts and Humanities · 7,418 works](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/arts-and-humanities/) · [Religious studies · 203 works](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/arts-and-humanities/religious-studies/) 🧭 Topics 3[Speech act theory · 79 works](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/speech-act-theory/) · [Hebrew & Aramaic · 474 works](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/hebrew-aramaic/) · [Biblical Hebrew · 254 works](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/biblical-hebrew/) ## Cite Cite as Raphael Akhijemen Idialu and Princess Omovrigho Idialu. 2026. Speech act theory and the performative language of lament in the individual Psalms of complaint. International Journal of Arts Languages Linguistics and Literary Studies. The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. [DOI 10.4314/jolls.v15i3.4](https://doi.org/10.4314/jolls.v15i3.4) ```bibtex @article{idialu2026speech, title = {{Speech act theory and the performative language of lament in the individual Psalms of complaint}}, author = {Raphael Akhijemen Idialu and Princess Omovrigho Idialu}, journal = {International Journal of Arts Languages Linguistics and Literary Studies}, year = {2026}, doi = {10.4314/jolls.v15i3.4}, url = {https://doi.org/10.4314/jolls.v15i3.4} } ``` - [← previous SPARTA: Evaluating Reasoning Segmentation Robustness through Black-Box Adversarial Paraphrasing in Text Autoencoder Latent Space](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/zinkovich-2026-sparta-evaluating-reasoning-segmentation-robustness/) - [next → SPQ: An Ensemble Technique for Large Language Model Compression](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/yao-2026-spq-ensemble-technique-large-language/) - [↑ back to papers of 2026](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2026/page/9/) Updated 23 October 2026