Verbum Tip 4b: Bible Browser - Longacre genres Part 1

MJ. Smith

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Facet: Longacre genre

Documentation

Thompson, Jeremy. 2016. Longacre Genre Analysis of the Bible Dataset Documentation. Bellingham, WA: Faithlife.

Longacre, Robert E. The Grammar of Discourse, (New York: Springer), 1996.^[1]

Values one must understand from the documentation:

[quote]Narrative

A text that is agent focused and follows a temporal succession. The narrative sub-genres of Story and Future Events are distinguished by projection into the past or future, respectively.

Narrative: Story

A text that recounts the past activities of an agent(s) according to a temporal succession. Examples of this genre abound in the primary history of the Hebrew Bible, which ranges from Genesis through 2 Kings.

Narrative: Future Events

A text that predicts future activities of an agent(s) according to a temporal succession. This genre might typically be referred to as prophecy, but many prophetic texts of the Bible can also be hortatory or expository. Examples of this genre, however, can often be found in prophetic texts such as Jeremiah’s oracles against nations in Jer. 47–48, 50.

Procedural

A text that lacks agent focus but follows as temporal succession. The procedural sub-genres of How it was done and How to do it are distinguished by projection into the past or future, respectively.

Procedural: How it was done

A text that describes the steps by which a past action was performed. Examples of this genre are texts describing how priests performed sacrifices or offerings.

Procedural: How to do it

A text that describes the steps by which a person should perform an action. Examples of this genre are texts that describe how priests should perform sacrifices or offerings.

Behavioral

A text that is agent focused but lacks temporal succession. The behavioral sub-genres of Hortatory and Evaluation are distinguished by projection into the past or future, respectively.

Behavioral: Hortatory

A text that places obligations on the speaker or some other person. Examples of this genre are texts where promises or commands are made or where warnings are issued.

Behavioral: Evaluation

A text that evaluates the past behavior of an individual or group based on some criteria. Examples of this genre are texts where past behavior is either praised or rebuked.

Expository

A text that lacks both agent focus and temporal succession. The expository sub-genres of What things are or were like and What things will be like are distinguished by projection into the past or future, respectively.

Expository: What things are or were like

A text that describes what things are or were like. Standard examples of this genre can be found in the dialogues between Job and his friends. Parables are non-standard examples since they are often in narrative form but often begin with statements like “the Kingdom of God can be compared to” or “the Kingdom of God is like.”

Expository: What things will be like

A text that describes what things will be like in the future. Some prophetic texts fall into this genre where a future time period is described but specific events in the future are not being narrated nor are promises being made or warnings being issued.^[2]

Bible Browser

My initial setup is with the NRSV as the translation and Abraham as a pre-selected person facet. This leaves all but one (Procedural: How it was done) of the Longacre genres available for selection.

Narrative: Future Events

For each of the selected results, can you explain why it is classified as Narrative: Future Events? If not, be honest with yourself and go back through the documentation until you can explain the classification. Or, less commonly, build a strong case that it is mis-classified and file a data error report.

Interactive

There is no interactive built directly upon the Longacre genre analysis data. However,  while the Bible Book Explorer’s data is at the Bible book level, the Books view of the Bible Books Explorer is based on the Longacre genre values.

Context Menu and Information Panel

Using Deut. 11:12 as an example of a verse selected by Person: Abraham à Longacre genre: Narrative: Future Events, one sees the genre displayed in the Information Panel.

Invoking the Context Menu through right-click and selecting the Longacre genre option on the left-hand side:

One can copy the Search argument or initiate any of six searches. Or one can open Thompson, Jeremy. 2016. Longacre Genre Analysis of the Bible Dataset Documentation. Bellingham, WA: Faithlife to the Glossary entry for Narrative: Future Events.

Search

From Verbum Help:

[quote]Longacre Genre

Using a system defined in The Grammar of Discourse by Robert E. Longacre, this dataset outlines four main genres—-each having two sub-genres. See more details in the Longacre Genre Analysis of the Bible Dataset Documentation.

•             Primary ~ <LongacreGenre ...> — The primary category.

•             Secondary ~ <LongacreGenre ...> — The subcategory.

Examples:

•             {Label Longacre Genre WHERE Primary ~ <lgenre Behavioral: Evaluation> AND Secondary ~ <lgenre Expository: What things are or were like>}

•             {Section <lgenre = Narrative: Story>}^[3]

From Longacre Genre Analysis of the Bible Dataset Documentation:

[quote]Using Search

Instances of particular data type milestones can be searched using Section search extension to search for the datatype milestones by using the Milestone searching syntax. To do this, one needs to know the data type name (here “lgenre” will suffice) and the actual milestones within the data type. Once these are known, a search can be specified. For example, the following search will locate instances of Longacre’s Narrative: Story genre:

{Section <lgenre = Narrative: Story>}

The section search extension, however, only works for primary genres (see Organization above). To search both primary and secondary genres Label search should be used as follows:

{Label Longacre Genre WHERE Primary ~ <LongacreGenre Behavioral: Evaluation> AND Secondary ~ <LongacreGenre Expository: What things are or were like>}

To focus on primary or secondary genre using Label search the following syntax would be used:

{Label Longacre Genre WHERE Primary ~ <LongacreGenre Behavioral: Evaluation>}

{Label Longacre Genre WHERE Secondary ~ <LongacreGenre Expository: What things are or were like>}

From these basic searches, more complex searches can be created such as searching for where the Greek word λόγος occurs in a Narrative: Story:

greek:λόγος INTERSECTS {Label Longacre Genre WHERE Primary ~ <LongacreGenre Narrative: Story>}^[4]

 

The Search argument one copies from the Context Menu is {Section <LongacreGenre = Narr: Future>}. The Bible Search yields the following results:

To limit the list to entries related to Abraham, add the search term <Person Abraham>.

These are the same results that we got from the Bible Browser.

Odds and ends

Logical operator: AND

From Verbum Help:

[quote]Logical (“Boolean”) operators

The basic logical operators are:

AND this AND that — Both the left and right side terms must be present to match.^[5]

From Verbum Help

[quote]Match all the words

By default, all of the terms in the query must be present in the result in order for it to be matched. To find articles (or in Bible Search, verses) that have all the words faith and hope and _love, type faith hope love only. This is equivalent to faith AND hope AND love (see more about the AND operator below).

By default, terms are allowed to match in any order and at any distance from one another within the unit being searched (articles in Basic Search, verses in Bible and Morph Search). To force one term to be before or after another, or to be a particular distance away, some extra operators will be necessary.

In our example, {Section <LongacreGenre = Narr: Future>} is the first term. <Person Abraham> is the second term. They are connected by a space which is equivalent to an AND operator.

Section

From Verbum Help:

[quote]Section

Some data, especially data that is normally applied to long regions of text, must be found using the Section extension term, that takes a data type reference of the information one wishes to find as its content.

Literary Type, Cultural Concepts, Biblical Events, and Preaching Themes (when applied to the Bible text) use the Section search extension.

For example:

•             {Section <LiteraryType Allegory>}

•             {Section <Culture Assassination>}

•             {Section <Event The flood>}

•             {Section <PreachingTheme Marriage>}

Several literary phenomena do as well:

•             Speech Acts — {Section <SpeechAct = Info: Assert>}

•             Sentence Types — {Section <Sentence = Declarative>}

•             Hebrew Grammatical Constructions — {Section <GrammaticalConstructions = Root Pairs>}

•             Greek Grammatical Constructions — {Section <GrammaticalConstructions = 1st Condition>}^[7]

I know of no source that provides a comprehensive list of data types requiring the Section extension. It falls under the following Verbum advice:

[quote]Note that the string specifier for all of these data types must exactly match the primary label of the person/place/etc., and that they are case-sensitive. Only <Person Simon (Cyrene)> will match Simon of Cyrene. <Person Simon of Cyrene> and <Person simon cyrene> will not work. It’s best to use the term picker in the Search panel or right-click to build these terms.

Unfortunately, this does not sit well with me as it can be summarized as “Find an example in order to build the search to find examples.”

Visual Filter

One way to develop a true understanding of the coding is to make a visual filter so that it is visible in the text.

Step 1: Create a Highlighting Palette that matches the color scheme of the Bible Book Brower as closely as possible.

Step 2: Create a Visual Filter based on the Palette. Note I always close a Visual Filter pointing to a Bible I rarely use and covering a single book. This avoids the overhead of the filter building its content when I don’t expect to use the filter.

Step 3: Apply the visual filter to your Bible:

This type of visual filtering is useful for (a) learning Verbum, (b) teaching Verbum, and (c) leading a Bible study. For day to day study, the right context menu or information panel is usually sufficient.

The next tip will continue with the second search form for Longacre genre.

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^[1] Jeremy Thompson, Longacre Genre Analysis of the Bible Dataset Documentation (Bellingham, WA: Faithlife, 2016).

^[2] Jeremy Thompson, Longacre Genre Analysis of the Bible Dataset Documentation (Bellingham, WA: Faithlife, 2016).

^[3] Verbum Help (Bellingham, WA: Faithlife, 2018).

^[4] Jeremy Thompson, Longacre Genre Analysis of the Bible Dataset Documentation (Bellingham, WA: Faithlife, 2016).

^[5] Verbum Help (Bellingham, WA: Faithlife, 2018).

Verbum Help (Bellingham, WA: Faithlife, 2018).

^[7] Verbum Help (Bellingham, WA: Faithlife, 2018).

Verbum Help (Bellingham, WA: Faithlife, 2018).

John Connell

Your link to the next tip is inactive: Verbum Tip 4c

-john