BEFORE search is failing with INTERSECTS

Harry Hahne

Can someone tell me what is wrong with this Morph search on NA28 Greek New Testament:

lemma:ἀγαπάω BEFORE 5 WORDS (<Person God> INTERSECTS @NN)

This search works fine:

lemma:ἀγαπάω (<Person God> INTERSECTS @NN)

It shows that there is a valid match for the first search in John 3:16, among others.

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Dave Hooton

Can someone tell me what is wrong with this Morph search on NA28 Greek New Testament:

lemma:ἀγαπάω BEFORE 5 WORDS (<Person God> INTERSECTS @NN)

I expanded @NN to <LogosMorphGr ~ NN???> in case it was incompatible with the proximity operators.

Then I removed parentheses and switched the lemma position:-

<Person God> INTERSECTS <LogosMorphGr ~ NN???> AFTER 5 WORDS lemma:ἀγαπάω

I thought it will use the word in <Person God> that has that morphology and then apply the 5 words proximity to the lemma.

Well, it worked.

But so did yours after removing the parentheses!

Harry Hahne

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1204692#Comment_1204692

I wonder why the parentheses do not work. I wanted too make clear that INTERSECTS applies to <Person God> rather than what had gone before it. I suppose INTERSECTS always processes the previous word, so in this case it would not matter. But there could be instances where it does matter.

The issue seems to be that BEFORE does not want an expression in parenthesis. The AND, OR and ANDNOT Boolean operators are quite happy to handle an expression with parenthesis. But proximity operators are not (WITHIN, BEFORE, AFTER). This looks like a bug to me.

I wonder how you would create a search where you had a group of two search terms that must be in parentheses, but must follow another group of two search terms that must be in parentheses. Alternatively, what if you wanted to allow either of two search terms to occur BEFORE another group of search terms?

Suppose in the previous search, I wanted two search terms that require INTERSECTS. Here is an example as an exercise, so I understand the search syntax. I want to have the verb ἀγαπάω and the nominative noun to be <Person God> and an accusative noun <Person Jesus>. This works if I don't care about word order:

(lemma:ἀγαπάω <Person God> INTERSECTS @NN) (<Person Jesus> INTERSECTS @NA)

But if I care about word order it does not work:

(lemma:ἀγαπάω <Person God> INTERSECTS @NN) BEFORE (<Person Jesus> INTERSECTS @NA)

This grouping of parentheses returns results, but it also returns false hits:

lemma:ἀγαπάω BEFORE 5 WORDS ((<Person God> INTERSECTS @NN) OR (<Person Jesus> INTERSECTS (@NN))

In addition to legitimate instances of ἀγαπάω before either God or Jesus as the nominative (e.g. John 3:16), this returns Mark 10:21, where Ἰησοῦς occurs BEFORE ἠγάπησεν -- just the opposite of what I asked for. I am genuinely puzzled about how parentheses function in these searches.

Dave Hooton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1204736#Comment_1204736

I am genuinely puzzled about how parentheses function in these searches.

I break down a search so I can see where things are going wrong

<Person God> INTERSECTS @NN <Person Jesus>

shows the results and the highlighting one expects in Matthew.

It acts acts as we would expect i.e.

(<Person God> INTERSECTS @NN) <Person Jesus>

In an adjacent Search panel I run:

<Person God> INTERSECTS @NN BEFORE <Person Jesus>

and there is a disconnect as there are more results.

It appears to act like:-

<Person God> INTERSECTS (@NN BEFORE <Person Jesus>)

when you look at the extra results.

Now remove the INTERSECTS and use the older WITHIN expression:-

(<Person God> WITHIN 0 WORDS @NN) BEFORE <Person Jesus>

Bingo!

I leave you to reformulate & validate the original query, and raise a separate BUG thread on INTERSECTS.