Head Term Part of Speech

I'll admit that I'm still very much in the learning stage, but my understanding is that the head term of a nominal phrase is always a noun.

I've been trying a syntax search to find how often each preposition governs each case, following the pattern given here: https://community.logos.com/forums/t/52262.aspx. I've gotten a lot of results, but never enough to account for all appearances of the prepositions.

I think I've tracked the problem down to the fact that a large number of nominal phrases have a verb as the head word (and verbs obviously don't have any case at all, so they don't come up in my syntax search).

I get over 3,000 results for this search, and I'm not sure what to make of it. Is this just an error in Cascadia, or is there something I'm missing?

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MJ. Smith

Welcome to the forums.

[quote]In English grammar, the term nominal is a category that describes the usage of parts of speech in a sentence. Specifically, the nominal definition is a noun, noun phrase, or any word or word group that functions as a noun. It is also known as a substantive. The term comes from the Latin, meaning "name." Nominals can be the subject of a sentence, the object of a sentence, or the predicate nominative, which follows a linking verb and explains what the subject is.

Depending upon the theory of grammar you are using participles which may function as a noun/nominative/substantive may be classified as verbs or are nouns. Or consider the sentence "Dancing with Wolves is a movie" ...

Austin Woodruff

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1179598#Comment_1179598

I don't think the problem is participles. I'm looking at places like 1 Cor 10:30, which ends with the prepositional phrase "ὑπὲρ οὗ ἐγὼ εὐχαριστῶ". "ὑπὲρ" is the preposition, and "οὗ ἐγὼ εὐχαριστῶ" functions as a nominal phrase which is the object of the preposition. But according to Cascadia, the head term of that nominal phrase is "εὐχαριστῶ", which is an ordinary present-active-indicative verb.

My search should find this as a case where ὑπὲρ governs the genitive, but it doesn't because it looks at εὐχαριστῶ instead of οὗ.

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1179628#Comment_1179628

I don't think the problem is participles.

I gave participles as a common example that fit the definition I had quoted above. I did not intend for it to be taken as the answer to your concern except in very specific cases. I meant the quotation to be the broader answer.

Austin Woodruff

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1179657#Comment_1179657

Thank you for the clarification. My question was more specifically about the Head Term of a nominal phrase. I know that nominal phrases can be the object of a preposition, but in those cases I want to determine the case that is being governed by the preposition.

Since nominal phrases function as nouns, it's my understanding that the Head Term of the nominal phrase must be a noun, and I should be able to use a syntax search to identify the case of that noun. But Cascadia is telling me that the Head Terms of 3,093 nominal phrases are verbs. That doesn't make sense to me, and it prevents the syntax search from returning the full set of results.

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1179659#Comment_1179659

Since nominal phrases function as nouns, it's my understanding that the Head Term of the nominal phrase must be a noun

No - that is what my example "Dancing with the Wolves is a movie and the quoted definition were trying to tell you. The head term of of the nominal phrase is not required to be a noun unless you analyze at the "chunk" level to handle multi-word lexemes.

Austin Woodruff

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1179674#Comment_1179674

Is analyzing at the "chunk" level an option in the Logos syntax search?

More to the point, how can I construct a syntax search that identifies 1 Cor 10:30 as a place where ὑπέρ governs the genitive?

Keep Smiling 4 Jesus :)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1179706#Comment_1179706

More to the point, how can I construct a syntax search that identifies 1 Cor 10:30 as a place where ὑπέρ governs the genitive?

Personally have learned to start with a Morph Search before creating a Syntax Search: e.g.

lemma:ὑπέρ BEFORE 2 WORDS (@DG?? OR @NG??? OR @R??G??? OR @V??P??G?)

1 Corinthians 10:30 has ὑπέρ followed by genitive pronoun.

Syntax Search strategy is using Morph Search to look at visual syntax analysis of expected results for creating Syntax Search.

Keep Smiling [:)]

Austin Woodruff

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1179718#Comment_1179718

Thanks!

My problem with the morph search is that it returns too many hits. ὑπέρ occurs 150 times in the NT, and I'd like to run one search on the genitive and another on the accusative which together account for the 150 occurrences. The morph search returns 274 hits because it counts every word separately, which may be two genitives after ὑπέρ. If I reduce the range to 1 word and divide the results by 2, I get a reasonable answer, but a few get missed.

Here's the syntax search I was using. It returns 129 for the genitive (but misses 1 Cor 10:30) and 14 for the accusative, which is only 143 total.

I still don't understand why εὐχαριστῶ is considered the head term of the nominal phrase in 1 Cor 10:30. I guess I don't even understand what the "head term" is if it can be a different part of speech than the phrase it heads.

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1179706#Comment_1179706

Is analyzing at the "chunk" level an option in the Logos syntax search?

Unfortunately no, multi-word lexemes ("words") is a major limitation of Logos. A chunk in linguistics is a group of words that behaves as a single word but is not necessarily a phrase. "Dancing with Wolves" is an example when used as a title of a movie. The three words together are treated as a noun that serves as the subject in "Dancing with Wolves is a movie"..

This is how Logos analyzed your reference verse in Wu, Andi, and Randall Tan. Cascadia Syntax Graphs of the New Testament: SBL Edition. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2010.:

Austin Woodruff

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1179726#Comment_1179726

Yes, I've spent a fair amount of time staring at that verse in Cascadia! The object of the preposition isn't just a chunk, it's a clearly identified nominal phrase. If I had to identify the head term of that phrase, it would be οὗ, which is the genitive pronoun that give the phrase its function. I'm at a loss for why the head term is the verb.

Also, the head nodes are marked with an asterisk, so Cascadia seems to be treating all three words as the head. Shouldn't "ἐγὼ εὐχαριστῶ" be one tier down as its own phrase?

Austin Woodruff

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1179729#Comment_1179729

I didn't necessarily solve the problem, but I think I did just have a breakthrough!

Using my syntax search above, I find 129 instances where ὑπὲρ governs the genitive and 14 where it governs the accusative. I just did another search and there are 7 instances where Cascadia considers a verb to be the object of ὑπὲρ (including 1 Cor 10:30), which means that all 150 cases of ὑπὲρ are accounted for.

I guess I'll have to go through those 7 manually to get my final answer, but that's very manageable.

Thanks for the help!