searching on the "base" field

I am trying to get my mind around the proper use of the "base" field.

The Help document says that this refers to the Stem Form.

I expected that this means that this would search for all forms of the word. So a search for base:love should be equivalent to using the "Match all Word Forms" with a search for "love".

Unfortunately that syntax does not work. Am I using the wrong syntax?

I tried using this in English Bibles and even All Resources, but I get nothing.

Is this "base" field no longer in use?

I had hoped that this might be a way around the lack of a nostem() search operator, which I miss from the Libronix days. The ability to limiting stemming to only certain search terms could be useful at times. See https://community.logos.com/forums/p/9679/76662.aspx

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Comments

MJ. Smith

I may be wrong, but I have assumed that base applied only to resources that show it as a search field in the information panel of a resource and that it would appear only in resources that had morphological coding that included a stem/base element.

Harry Hahne

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1202140#Comment_1202140

I have assumed that base applied only to resources that show it as a search field in the information panel of a resource

I cannot find it in any of my resources. It does not show in the list of fields when I search All Resources either.

If this has been removed, has it been replaced with anything. Perhaps the Match All Word Forms in English searches is intended to replace it.

Dave Hooton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1202171#Comment_1202171

If this has been removed, has it been replaced with anything. Perhaps the Match All Word Forms in English searches is intended to replace it.

I can't comment on the former, but Match All Word Forms applies only to English words; and the algorithm has its flaws.

Andrew Batishko

I think the "base" field is used in a few German Bibles, but I'm not sure it's used anywhere else.

You can control stemming on a per-term basis. The help file covers this in the Mark Sensitivity subsection of "Advanced Searching".

First make sure your search panel is set to "match all word forms". Then use the "match exact" term modifier. So, something like this will turn off stemming matches for just the term "loves" while doing a stemming match on the term "test": ([match exact]loves) AND test

Note that enclosing the term in parentheses seems to be required to prevent the flag from bleeding over into following terms.

Harry Hahne

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1202289#Comment_1202289

First make sure your search panel is set to "match all word forms". Then use the "match exact" term modifier. So, something like this will turn off stemming matches for just the term "loves" while doing a stemming match on the term "test": ([match exact]loves) AND test

Thanks for this helpful information!

Am I correct that [match exact] works the same as EXACT() did in Libronix?

Is there anything like NOSTEM() in Libronix? This would exclude variant forms of the word, but allow upper or lower case. For example, I might not care if a word is capitalized, but I want a particular form of the word.

Andrew Batishko

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1202326#Comment_1202326

Am I correct that [match exact] works the same as EXACT() did in Libronix?

Sorry, I have no idea what EXACT() did in Libronix. That seems like a plausible assumption.

I did a little poking around in the code. It doesn't appear to be documented, but it looks like you can use nostem as a term modifier, so something like: [nostem]loved

Harry Hahne

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1202338#Comment_1202338

I did a little poking around in the code. It doesn't appear to be documented, but it looks like you can use nostem as a term modifier, so something like: [nostem]loved

This is fantastic news, Andrew. Thanks for digging into that.

Ever since Logos 4 came out, this topic has come up from time to time on the forums (e.g. https://community.logos.com/forums/p/9679/76662.aspx#76662). Whenever anyone asked about it, they were told that the Match All Word Forms option on the panel menu replaced the nostem() search term modifier. But that has the drawback that all search terms are subject to the Match All Word Forms option.

It appears that the programmers just carried over this bit of search code from Libronix without documenting it. However, the search syntax is different:

Libronix used nostem(loved)
Logos (since version 4?) uses [nostem]loved.

The only quirk is the one that you noted: The [nostem] search term modifier applies to all subsequent search terms, unless you put the search term in parentheses: ([nostem]loved). I experimented with this and can confirm that by using parentheses, I can control which search terms do not use stemming.

I appreciate your help.

Dave Hooton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1202417#Comment_1202417

I did a little poking around in the code. It doesn't appear to be documented, but it looks like you can use nostem as a term modifier, so something like: [nostem]loved

This is fantastic news, Andrew. Thanks for digging into that.

[match exact] works the same as EXACT() in Libronix according to https://wiki.logos.com/Search_Matching_Commands

[match nostem] works the same as [nostem] and it was an undocumented Match command** (and [exact] works the same as [match exact])!

** now documented!