Extra characters in BHS (SESB) morphological search

Tony Pyles · 2025-02-06T20:20:37+00:00

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Forgive me if this is already sorted; I am not active on these forums and don't know how to search them well.

In attempting to construct a morphological search (for certain forms of a specific lemma) in BHS a number of extra characters appear. They do not appear when I try this in the Lexham Hebrew Bible, and if I delete them from the line in the BHS search everything seems to work out fine. Is there some setting I need to change? Is this a bug?

I'm trying to search for all of the Qal forms of ירא in the Pentateuch (I'm figuring out how to do this for a Word Study assignment so that I can help my students do so). Here is what things look like searching BHS (the SESB resource):

But if I search in LHB I don't get all of the ?s or the +S at the end:

Of course I am also curious about the different number of results; without combing through I suspect is has to do with a couple of K/Q.

Thanks in advance!

Tony

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MJ. Smith

Nice mix of apples and oranges. If you look at your search argument:

lemma.h indicates that the morphology being used is the Logos Hebrew morphology
lemma.sesb indicates that the sesb morphology is being used.

Different systems of morphology with differ attributes to select by - no reason to expect them to be the same. The coding structure can be seen by entering @ in a morph search for each resource. They are also documented in the wiki

The ? is simply a place holder in the morphology to say any value is fine. It is not necessary to use a place marker to the right of the last value you care about.

Tony Pyles

Thanks very much! Working through the morphology codes it looks like the "+S" at the end typically designates a pronominal suffix, with codes to follow the S noting number, gender, etc. Interesting that it should find forms without suffixes with the S present in the search string.

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MJ. Smith

Nice mix of apples and oranges. If you look at your search argument:

lemma.h indicates that the morphology being used is the Logos Hebrew morphology
lemma.sesb indicates that the sesb morphology is being used.

The ? is simply a place holder in the morphology to say any value is fine. It is not necessary to use a place marker to the right of the last value you care about.

Tony Pyles

Thanks for your reply; I anticipated from the lemma.h vs. lemma.sesb.h what you describe (different morphological databases)—I'm glad to have my suspicion confirmed.

I also suspected that the "?" was a placeholder functioning in the manner that you describe; clearly it behaved as such when I ran my search. Again, glad to have that confirmed.

There are two things that remain unresolved for me:

Why does initiating a search in one text generate the placeholders, but the other does not?
What is indicated by the "+S" at the end of the search string for SESB?

And where would I find the wiki you mention? I would be happy to read through documentation related to the modules, tagging, etc.

None of this interfered with my ability to do what I wanted, but I am trying to anticipate any challenges, difficulties, or confusing elements my students may encounter. I am a long-time user of another program for original language work, but have attempted very little original language work in Logos—but Logos is what most of my students are working with.

MJ. Smith

Why does initiating a search in one text generate the placeholders, but the other does not?

That is a matter of not needing them to the right of the last parameter you provided. All morphology add ? where needed

And where would I find the wiki you mention?

https://community.logos.com/kb/articles/2141-morphology-codes?utm_source=community-search&utm_medium=organic-search&utm_term=morphology+codes the links have not all been updated to account for the change in platform

What is indicated by the "+S" at the end of the search string for SESB?

I don't recall off the top of my head - I only remember that it is a Hebrew verb attribute and I don't know Hebrew

Tony Pyles