TIP of the day: Plain meaning/ analytic reading - Andersen Forbes visualizations
In the preceding post, I deliberately didn't say anything about the use of the morphology tags and clause visualizations. Think back of your early school years when you were beginning to learn to read your native language. First you learned to recognize words - perhaps with the help of sounding them out. Then you learned to identify the parts of speech. Finally you learned to put the parts of speech into a diagram. Why learn the parts of speech? so you can correctly diagram the sentence. Why learn to diagram a sentence? so you can piece together complex sentences and understand them. In college did you determine the parts of speech and diagram the sentences in your textbooks? Generally not. So why have complete Bibles pre-tagged with morphology and syntax? To perform computer based searches on the corpus (usually Bible) ... not to use as a cheat sheet to avoid the work of learn Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, Latin, Aramaic ... If you don't have a teacher you may use them briefly to check your work while you are learning. [End of soap-box]
This post deals with the following resources:
- Andersen, Francis I., and A. Dean Forbes. The Hebrew Bible: Andersen-Forbes Phrase Marker Analysis. Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2009.
- The Hebrew Bible: Andersen-Forbes Analyzed Text. Francis I. Andersen; A. Dean Forbes, 2008.
- Andersen, Francis I., and A. Dean Forbes. A Systematic Glossary to the Andersen-Forbes Analysis of the Hebrew Bible. Logos Bible Software, 2006.
The following is useful background information:
- book review of Francis I. Andersen and A. Dean Forbes. Biblical Hebrew Grammar Visualized. Linguistic Studies in Ancient West Semitic 6. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2012. xvii + 394 pp. $69.50.
- Andersen and Forbes on Genesis 1:1-3 on Ancient Hebrew Poetry
- Andersen Forbes website
1. There is a pleasant surprise - front matter describing the typographical conventions. This should be a given but I have been on a negative run.
2. The morphology information available in a popup on mouse over includes additional information of source and genre.
3. This additional information allows one to build some useful visual filters:
4. The clause visualization has the normal functionality- the selected unit showing in red highlighting - with a twist: rather than mouse over bring up definitions from the glossary, it brings up a popup with additional information on the item. This information is in terminology more familiar to most users than the OpenText terminology.
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."