Tagging Greek words with multiple roots in the New Testament

Rick Brannan (Faithlife) said:

Since I'm the one who did the original analysis and made the decision not to analyze prefixed prepositions, I can say that there is a fuzzy line somewhere between the way roots were implemented for the New Testament and a complete morphemic analysis (like that of Greenlee's NT Morpheme Lexicon). I chose to stop at a particular spot on my way down the rabbit hole. How to handle prefixed prepositions is one of the areas of difficulty. There are other areas, like the prefixed α that may or may not indicate negation (e.g. απιστος), or a prefixed ευ (e.g. ευαγγελιζω) which isn't a preposition, but might be identifiable. There are other less visible and more confusing ... er ... complicated morphemic and etymologic things going on, as I recall, that are difficult to suss out.

Thanks for responding, Rick.

I can appreciate the challenges involved in analyzing etymology and word roots. But I would suggest that the prefixed prepositions are an important part of the etymology of Greek compound verbs. The fact that with compound verbs the augment is inserted between the preposition and the root verb shows that the preposition is conceptually distinct. Greek textbooks and  grammar books teach that such words come from two roots.

I recognize that etymology is not a reliable guide to meaning. For example, ἀναγινώσκω ("read") is a combination of ἀνα ("up") and γινώσκω ("know"), but reading has nothing to do with the direction "up". But someone studying roots should recognize this limitation of etymology. If I want to search for roots at all, I would be quite interested to find words with ευ- or συν- or any other root, not simply the root that is the longest. In the case of συν- compound verbs, a lot of the Apostle Paul's theology hinges of the συν- compound verbs. They describe what God did for believers "with" Christ as well as what God expects believers to do together "with" one another. This is just one example where the ability to search for all of the roots of Greek words would be quite valuable.

With experimentation, I found that some words are tagged in Logos with multiple roots. Here are a few examples of verbs tagged with multiple roots that I came across:

• συναντάω (verb): roots συν and αντι
• διανύω (verb): roots δια and ανα

Here are a few other parts of speech that I found were tagged with multiple roots:

• ἐπάνω (preposition): roots επι and ανα
• ποταπός (adjective): roots απο and που
• μεταξύ: roots μετα and συν
• ἀπέναντι (preposition): εν, απο and αντι -- three roots!

In the case of the compound verb συναντάω, it is not clear to me why this particular verb was tagged with the preposition συν-, but other συν- compound verbs were not. I would l love to have consistency in the tagging of roots.

Rick, I very much appreciate the work you have done over the years in adding rich multi-level tagging to ancient primary sources. I know it is tedious behind-the-scenes work. I and many other scholars appreciate these tags and benefit greatly from them. I use the fruits of your labor nearly every day and I teach my seminary students how to use these tools effectively in many classes.

Rick Brannan (Faithlife) said:

Hi Harry.

You'll note that all of your examples of prefixed prepositions are actually combinations of prepositions, which is why they "made the cut" earlier.

FWIW, we agree this work should be done. I just have absolutely no idea when it might happen (but I know it won't be soon).

Yeah. I thought they were unusual in that regards. 

Thanks for considering my request. I think it would be a good improvement in the data.