What lemma tagging scheme is used for Dictionary of Classical Hebrew?

Tim Finlay

First of all, many thanks for making this resource available at a reasonable price. One of the great difficulties in tagging the lemmas in this work is that the DCH frequently has more lemma entries for the same set of root letters than either BDB or HALOT. For example, BDB has four entries for ענה: to answer, to be occupied or busy, to oppress, and to sing. HALOT has four entries: to answer, to be wretched, to be busy, and to sing. DCH has twelve lemma entries for the same set of letters but many of them are tentative possibilities for a single usage that they acknowledge could be one of the other entries. Does Logos have a scheme for how to handle these? If there is an intended scheme, then if we know what it is we can let you know when some of the links are not tagged properly yet. This is not a complaint; I am delighted to have this resource out even with incomplete/imperfect tagging. But let us know the scheme and we can document, where the tagging fails to meet with the scheme you have set.

Mike Aubrey

Hi Tim,

In general, the goal was to make keylinking as easy as possible for the user.

The challenge of DCH is that often times, new senses and entries are proposed with particular references based on journal articles and other technical secondary literature, but then those same references refer back also to a more traditional entry--Clines always lists tentative/newly proposed entries after the more standard one. In those cases, we preferred to link to the first/more standard entry for two reasons:

1. People linking to the lexicon from English translations were more likely to be using a translation where the meaning in the more traditional entry was being used in the translation.
2. The majority of the time, these sorts of cases involve a multiplication of very short entries, thus linking to the top entry tended to also show alternatives on the screen below--where if we linked to one of the tentatively proposed entries, the more standard/traditional one would not be visible unless the user knew that they needed to scroll up. That wouldn't be as intuitive. Even in the case of situations where the first entry is much larger, it is more natural to scroll down the same way you would while reading than needing to scroll up. And often times, if there is an alternative sense possible, the first entry will let you know, as it does here:

מַקְצֻעָה I 1 n.f. knife (unless מַקְצֻעָה II square)—pl. מַקְצֻעוֹת—knife, scraping tool, for shaping wood, <PREP> בְּ of instrument, by (means of), with, + עשׂה make Is 44:13 (+ שֶׂרֶד stylus, מְחוּגָה compass).*
ð קצע I scrape.

*[מַקְצֻעָה] II 1 n.f. square (unless מַקְצֻעָה I knife)—pl. מַקְצֻעוֹת—square, for working with wood, <PREP> בְּ of instrument, by (means of), with, + עשׂה make Is 44:13 (+ שֶׂרֶד stylus, מְחוּגָה compass).

I hope that's helpful as a quick answer.

(...still don't have the little green flame under my name...need to talk to someone about that!)