TIP of the day: subject vs. nominative vs. agent

MJ. Smith
MJ. Smith Member, MVP Posts: 53,042 ✭✭✭✭✭
edited November 20 in English Forum

1. One of the best ways to learn how to build searches and interpret Logos coding is to run related searches to see if you can explain the differences in results. We'll begin with the "<person>" search used in yesterday's TIP of the day which gave a manageable 5 results.

2. Using a clause search, we can look for all the cases in which the grammatical subject is Judas (son of James). From:Lukaszewski, Albert L. The Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament Glossary. Lexham Press, 2007. "subject: The sentential element which, in the context of a given clause, performs or causes the main verbal action. (References: BDF n/a; Wallace p. 401-404; Smyth §902.)" Only 3 of the 5 references are tagged as "subject".

3. Using a morphology search we can look for cases in which the lemma for Judas is in Nominative form and restrict the results to Judas (son of James) by adding the WITHIN 0 WORDS parameter. From Heiser, Michael S., and Vincent M. Setterholm. Glossary of Morpho-Syntactic Database Terminology. Lexham Press, 2013; 2013. "nominative The case that normally refers to the subject of a verb or a noun following a form of the verb "to be" or "to become" (ie, a predicate nominative) that renames the subject." 4 of the 5 results meet this criteria.

4. Using the Clause search we can search for cases where Judas (son of James) has the sematic role of agent. From Thompson, Jeremy. The Lexham Glossary of Semantic Roles. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2014. "Agent — The person or thing that instigates an action or causes change in another person or thing; for example, "David (Agent) struck Goliath" or "David (Agent) killed Goliath."" Only 2 of the 5 cases meet this condition.

5. Luke 16:6 meets the lemma, morphology and person requirements.

6. John 14:22 meets the lemma, morphology and person requirements.

7. John 14:23 does not meet the lemma or morphology requirements although it does meet the person requirements.

8. Acts 1:13 meets the lemma, morphology and person requirements.

9. Jude 3 does not meet the lemma or morphology requirements although it does meet the person requirements.. However, I believe that meeting the person requirement is an error in Logos coding and have reported it as such. Judas (brother of Jesus) is the coding for most of the book.

10. To check whether or not the Agent requirement is met, run Factbook on Judas (son of James) and check the Agent section. Only John 14:22 and Jude 3 (which we noted as an error) meet the Agent requirement.

11. To check the Subject requirement, one may have to resort to Clause Visualizations; However, one can first try the Example Uses section of BWS. In this case, the BWS is not particularly helpful.

12. The Clause Visualization shows that the subject Judas (son of James) was double counted in John 14:22 and confirms the John 14:23 Judas is not the subject. I'll let you check the remaining 3 references.

Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."

Comments

  • James Taylor
    James Taylor Member Posts: 1,408 ✭✭✭

    Great post MJ

    Logos 10  | Dell Inspiron 7373 | Windows 11 Pro 64, i7, 16GB, SSD | iPhone 13 Pro Max

  • Tim Finlay
    Tim Finlay Member Posts: 123

    M.J. This was a very helpful post. I did not realize that you could bring in aspects normally associated with Clause searches <person PN> into Morphological Searches. You can simplify the search by writing @NN WITHIN 0 WORDS <person Judas (son of James)> rather than writing out the lemma--I tried it and it works fine.

  • Doc B
    Doc B Member Posts: 3,537 ✭✭✭

    MJ ought to be on payroll at Faithlife. Her work is valuable and is of direct benefit to FL Corp. by way of their customers.

    [y][y]

    Eating a steady diet of government cheese, and living in a van down by the river.

  • MJ. Smith
    MJ. Smith Member, MVP Posts: 53,042 ✭✭✭✭✭

    You can simplify the search by writing @NN WITHIN 0 WORDS <person Judas (son of James)>

    Ah, yes, thank you.

    Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."