TIP: singular or plural pronoun? (visual filter)

Allen Browne

When the Bible speaks to “you,” is it addressing me-as-an-individual or us-as-a-community? English lacks the you/thou distinction that's there in the original languages. Compounding the problem, our culture is individualistic whereas theirs was collective. And we often read alone, whereas they heard Scripture read together.

Logos provides a simple way to tell the difference. Create a visual filter that displays a single box around singular pronouns and a double box around plural pronouns, like this:

To create the filter:

1. On the Documents menu, under the New column, click Visual Filter. Logos opens a new visual filter.
2. Set the type to Morph (top right).
3. Name it whatever you want. I called mine Sing/Plural Pronoun - Gk.
4. Set it to search All Morph in New Testament in All Resources with Logos Greek Morphology.
5. In the first row, enter @R???S and choose Box from the dropdown.
6. In the next row, enter @R???P and choose Double Box from the dropdown.
7. (Optional) Repeat steps 1 - 6 to create another visual filter for the Old Testament too. The only difference is that at step 4 it searches Logos Hebrew Morphology. Name it something like Sing/Plural Pronoun - Heb.
8. To show the filter in any translation that supports morphology, click the visual filter button (the three dots circled in the screenshot above), and turn on the filter.

It's a simple trick that's been around for years (Logos 4 onward). Hope it helps you read Scripture well.

Rich DeRuiter

You can also do this with verbs using @V??2?P for 2nd person plural verbs and @V??2?S for 2nd person singular.

My personal preference is to use just a single or double gray underline, which I find less intrusive to the reading experience.

BTW, you can just set it to filter "All Text" in "All Resources" and it works in both Greek and Hebrew for reverse interlinears.

Keep Smiling 4 Jesus :)

Allen Browne said:

It's a simple trick that's been around for years (Logos 4 onward).

Logos wiki => Examples of visual filters that has Greek Morphology filters also going back to Logos 4, which uses a single line above for singular and a wavy line for plural. Thankful for Faithlife enabling the free sharing of visual filters via Faithlife group documents.

Greek articles, adjectives, adverbs, nouns, pronouns, verbs are singular OR plural. Philippians 4:5 has both singular (gentle, be known) and plural (your, all men). 

Newer set of visual filters => more inductive symbols inserts Precept graphics for themes and topics. Thankful for lots of search results being digitally combined, but have learned to open resource and wait while visual filter searches are in progress (currently use Task Manager to watch CPU busy to know when visual filter highlighting completes).

Screen shot also has Propositional Outlines visual filter that was new in Logos 6 for New Testament => What's New in Logos 6 and expanded to Old Testament in Logos 7 => New Feature: Old Testament Propositional Bible Outlines

A subset of Greek Discourse => New Feature: Discourse Datasets and Visual Filters (Dataset) is enabled to show emphasis (bold with visual filter adding orange wavy line below) and background (grey with visual filter adding grey line below)

• Focus Main Clause
• Emphasis (Main Clause Other)
• Emphasis (Subordinate Clause)
• Nominative Circumstantial Frame
• Genitive Circumstantial Frame
• Dative Circumstantial Frame

Thanks for this discussion so changed my Discourse Analysis Background style to remove grey line above so could see singular line clearly:

Philippians 2:5 also has both singular (this, which, Christ) and plural (have, attitude, yourselves). FYI: have has the plural indicator while attitude does not in the NASB 95 Reverse Interlinear alignment of one Greek verb to translated English words.

Keep Smiling [:)]

David A Egolf

I really like this idea!  I will implement some form of it this weekend.

While we have the possibility for some language experts to add to this discussion, I would like to raise a question:  While plurality is evident in the written forms of the original languages, would it have been evident to those who were hearing the words being read?

Rich DeRuiter

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/887172#Comment_887172

David A Egolf said:

While we have the possibility for some language experts to add to this discussion, I would like to raise a question:  While plurality is evident in the written forms of the original languages, would it have been evident to those who were hearing the words being read?

Yes!

In Spanish (a second language I get by in pretty well), the difference between the second person singular and second person plural is very obvious. The difference is easy to hear. Just as importantly, these languages make such a distinction because these cultures find the distinction important and they listen for it.

In both Hebrew and Greek the pronouns are different and distinct as well. Remember the written form was created after the spoken form.

Keep Smiling 4 Jesus :)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/887206#Comment_887206

Hebrew also has dual:

Keep Smiling [:)]

Tim Finlay

In Hebrew, there are 8 words for "you" based on combinations of singular/plural masculine/feminine and subject/object. It is possible to create a filter for all 8.

Rich DeRuiter

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/890117#Comment_890117

Tim Finlay said:

In Hebrew, there are 8 words for "you" based on combinations of singular/plural masculine/feminine and subject/object. It is possible to create a filter for all 8.

The syntax above (for the filter) takes care of all of the above, as I understand how the syntax works.

PetahChristian

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/890150#Comment_890150

Thanks for sharing this useful tip!