Verbum Search through Tip of the Day #35a

MJ. Smith

Tip 35a: Factbook Biblical Person: Lemma: Bible Word Study: Case Frames

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“I hit” … only a very small child would treat this as a complete sentence. “I hit” requires a direct object – something that one has hit. “I hit you”, “I hit the large, red ball”, “I hit the power pole with my scooter”—all of these are complete sentences. In grammar verbs requiring a direct object are called transitive verbs; those that do not are intransitive; those that require two objects are called ditransitive.  Case frames are another way of looking at what is required (or permitted) for a particular verb. It uses semantic roles rather than object terminology for the elements.

The Case Frames Section is relevant only for verbs. Therefore, for the test case of Abram, this section has no results.

From Verbum Help:

[quote]Case Frames Section

The Case Frames guide section shows the different words that are required to determine the precise meaning of a given verb. It appears in the Bible Word Study.

In the study of semantics, case frames offer greater specificity than typical grammatical terms like subject, predicate, or object. Take, for example, the simple English sentence: “John hit the ball.” The verb “hit” here requires a hitter (“John”) and a hit entity (“the ball”). In other words, English does not allow sentences like “John hit.” Where standard grammar might say "John" is the subject, "hit" is the predicate, and "the ball" is the object, the language used in case frames labels "John" as the agent and "the ball" as the patient. This is helpful in maintaining consistent terminology even when the sentence is framed in the passive voice, like "The ball was hit by John."

This section will only appear when the key lemma is a verb.

Learn More

•   Semantic Roles and Case Frames documentation — dataset documentation^[1]

 

For an example, the verb “bless” from Gen 12:3 is chosen.

 

The section has a standard heading bar:

• an expand/contract arrowhead
• the section title: Case Frames”
• the Bible used for display of the Biblical text
• the help icon for a preview of the Help documentation on this section
• a settings option to select the Bible
• an “x” to delete the section from the Bible Word Study

The ring section also shows familiar behavior and contents:

• The center contains the lemma and its gloss; clicking on it opens a list below which shows all case frames, their counts, and their detail.
• The ring is divided into segments for each case frame pattern with the segment size having a size proportional to the number of instances falling into this case frame.
• Clicking on a segment pulls it out slightly for emphasis and opens a list below of the case frame and all cases of the lemma in that case frame.

Details include:

• An expand/contract arrowhead
• Definition of case frame through semantic roles
• Number of instances of this case frame over total number of instances for this lemma
• Spark chart for distribution of this case frame
• Bible reference
• Bible text with text color coded for semantic roles, gray highlight for full clause; mouse over color coded text shows semantic role definition

Note that there is one instance where the case frame is unknown; there are no color coded roles here.

One can verify the result through a clause search specifying the lemma for the verb (note the need to specify which of two lemmas is intended by the prefixing with the number 2) and the person one is interested in.

 

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^[1] Verbum Help (Bellingham, WA: Faithlife, 2018).