Searching for all the forms derived from a Hebrew root
I am new to Logos on Windows (6 months or so), coming from Accordance on the Macintosh. I set out several hours ago to find all the occurrences in the Hebrew Bible of the root ZKR in all its derivations (i.e. as a verb in its many forms, as the noun ZIKRON, as the proper name Zechariah, and so forth). After a couple of hours of trying on my own I could not find any way of doing this. I looked in the tutorial videos and found nothing to help. I have looked through forum messages and found a confusing and contradictory set of replies.
Apparently the only way to do this is to search for every lemma derived from the root ZKR as an independent search (or as a complex search using the OR command).
Is there someone from Logos who can clarify whether it is possible to search for all the instances of all the lemmas derived from a Hebrew root, such as ZKR, in a simple way or not?
David L. Adams
(By the way, I went back to Accordance on the Mac and managed to figure out how to do this search in less than 2 minutes (having not tried it before there), so I can't believe that there is no way to do this in Logos!)
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Logos doesn't handle Hebrew words by roots, rather by lemma, or dictionary forms.
This thread http://community.logos.com/forums/t/15169.aspx contains some ways to get the various form of a root.
Prov. 15:23
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Yes. I read that thread. It was one of the confusing and contradictory items that I referred to.
So, I take it that the simple answer is NO. There is no simple and straightforward way to find all the derivatives from a single root in Logos. How disappointing! Well, I guess it is a good thing that I have kept my ancient hardform copy of Mandelkern's Hebrew Concordance after all.
dla
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Sorry about the disappointing no [:(]
What did you find confusing or contradictory? Perhaps I (or someone else) could help clarify some things.
Prov. 15:23
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I re-read the thread and understood it fine. I think that my 'confusing and contradictory' comment was not so much pointed to that particular thread but to the collection of several different threads that attempted to address the general topic of searching for roots. That is probably because the several persons who contributed to the thread were not using terminology consistently.
That particular issue aside, in general I am finding the interface for morphological searching to a real pain in Logos. It is perfectly adequate for simple searches, but for more complicated searches it is quite difficult to use. Time and again I find that if I run searches in Accordance (using the Westminster 4.2 encoding scheme) and then come to Logos and try to replicate the search using a resource with the same encoding scheme I either cannot figure out how to do it, or I get an response that is incomplete (i.e. does not find everything that it should find).
I am aware that part of the problem of the complexity of morphological searching in Logos stems from having different encoding schemes employed in different resources, and that this is not the fault of Logos. I deal with this in one to two ways: (1) by generally sticking with one encoding scheme consistently so that I know how things are encoded in those resources; and (2) by running a search against all of the multiple resources that I have. Sometimes, however, one search specification/encoding scheme combination produces results that I cannot replicate in another encoding scheme regardless of how I try to specify the search. That is very frustrating.
I am willing to admit that my own relatively recent arrival in the land of Logos is part of my difficulty. However, I have been working with various Bible software packages on various platforms since I first encountered Gramcord back when it was in the developmental stage in the early-to-mid 1980s. In addition to having a doctorate in Old Testament and 20 years experience in teaching Hebrew and Old Testament courses, I have been working with computers since the late 1970s. So I am not a technological novice, nor am I afraid to read manuals or deal with technical matters (and, for that matter, a variety of programming languages).
I think that much of the difficulty may be the result of the lack of clear instructional help. The help system provides very minimal guidance for constructing morphological (and even less for syntax) searches. I have looked at all the on-line video tutorials that I can find on your site, and they only cover the very minimal basics. I bought the two-volume set of training manuals put together by Morris Proctor, but they were very disappointing. Again, they cover the very basics, but there are no examples or help for doing advanced searches. The material at wiki.logos.com is helpful as far as it goes. It just does not go very far beyond the basics either. I really think someone needs to write a good tutorial on morphology searches that includes basic and advanced examples, and that documents in one place all of the keywords and terms (like "lemma:" for example) that can be used, and provide examples for their use. I would write one myself, but I can't find the documentation anywhere that would give me the information to be able to do this.
As someone who is trying to use Logos to teach seminary and graduate students (on the basis of the original languages), I need to be able to help them understand how to search the text in as many ways as possible. I have committed to doing a series of workshops for students in the fall, and I am starting to worry about my ability (or lack thereof in this case) to teach them how to handle these kinds of advanced searches. I would be glad if you could point me to any documentation that would help address this need.
I am sorry for the long entry, but I wanted to explain as much as possible so that you would not have to waste your time trying to figure out exactly what level of information I am looking for.
Thanks for the assistance,
dla
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Thank you for your lengthy reply. It's helpful to know that you are aware of the help file and the wiki. By the way, the star under my avatar doesn't mean I am a Logos employee, just that I spend too much time on the forums [:)].
I too am frustrated at times with the thin level of documentation produced by Logos. I was one of the voices shortly after the release of Logos 4 that called for the wiki so that users could fill in the gap left by the help file. It has helped tremendously but still has room to mature. Most of what I can do with a morph search comes from jumping in when people post search questions and taking note when Dave Hooton contributes to these questions. He seems to have the best grasp of how to wield Logos' search engine around here. I believe that there was better search documentation for Logos 3 and he's transferred a lot of that knowledge over to Logos 4. Hopefully he can pipe up on what documentation he has used to help himself.
In the absence of documentation, why don't you post the types of complex morph searches that you would like to show your students when you do your workshops. I (and others) will do our best to perform the searches. From this I will take upon myself to start an "Advanced Morph Searching" wiki page from the information. Hopefully what results will be helpful to many people.
Prov. 15:23
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DavidLAdams said:
The help system provides very minimal guidance for constructing morphological (and even less for syntax) searches
I agree. I am trying to teach myself syntaxic and morphological searches by working reasonably methodically through major possibility - paralleling text books in morphology, paralleling Diagrammatic Analysis in syntax. What would assist me the most is to be able to see the logical code generated by my request. To me it is simply the equivalent of viewing the actual SQL generated when using in IDE GUI interface to build it. In the current state I never know if I wrote it wrong or if I've found a bug.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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I have a slightly different but related question. I would like to right-click on a word and in addition to selecting the Manuscript and Lemma forms, have a way to select the root word. For example, I want to right click on Torah (ie. law) in Psalms 1:2 and select Root->Yarah->Search this resource. That would be cool.
Can a Logos employee indicate if this is something that can be added as a feature enhancement, or its not even possible?
The problem is that I don't know Hebrew, so I don't know enough to search on hebrew words. I want the tool to return to me the root word (or a list of possible root words). Alternatively, I could open the TWOT, navigate to the root word, right-click and select the Strong's number and search all open resources, then select the NASB to get a list.
I'm trying to understand what the reason is that Logos4 can't make this simpler and more intuitive. Is it fundamentally about how the words are tagged? How does Accordance get it to work?
Thanks,
Ryan
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The problem is that yarah is not a root but a verbal form, YRH is the root. Due to the complexity and ambiguity of Hebrew, it's very difficult to tag by root, which is why no one has really done it (except Accordance, I believe.)
"The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected."- G.K. Chesterton
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This is coming. The analysis is done, but I'm fairly sure you won't see it until the next major version release (there's still some work that needs doing to deliver the data in the app/resources).
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Vincent Setterholm said:
This is coming. The analysis is done, but I'm fairly sure you won't see it until the next major version release (there's still some work that needs doing to deliver the data in the app/resources).
This is great news! Thanks for the update.
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Vincent Setterholm said:
This is coming. The analysis is done, but I'm fairly sure you won't see it until the next major version release (there's still some work that needs doing to deliver the data in the app/resources).
Please say that this will also apply to Syriac (and Aramaic) !!!
If that were to happen; if we could do root searches (i.e. works were tagged by root); and if Syriac display were fixed I would actually start using L4 again and I would dearly love to be able to go back to using L4. For the type of work I do I have had to re-install L3 and do the majority of my work there and work the best I can in L4 for the resources that are not available in L3.
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Ryan Schatz said:Vincent Setterholm said:
This is coming. The analysis is done, but I'm fairly sure you won't see it until the next major version release (there's still some work that needs doing to deliver the data in the app/resources).
This is great news! Thanks for the update.
Indeed! I guess that means I can reallocate my Uservoice vote on Stem/Cognate Search. Perhaps you should change 'Planned' to 'Started'?
Mac Pro (late 2013) OS 12.6.2
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James W Bennett said:
Please say that this will also apply to Syriac (and Aramaic) !!!
OK. It will cover the Aramaic portions of the Hebrew Bible, and Kiraz's SEDRA3 data already has roots for the NT Peshitta (you can search them now in LDLS 3 - right-click a word and under 'selected text' pick the word in the root field and 'search this resource' should correctly look for other instances in the root field, but this wasn't supported in Logos 4. We'll be able to add this type of functionality back in, but better in that it'll be based on a data type instead of field tags, which has significant advantages to do with keeping homograph numbers together with the root words, making searching easier and preventing potential bad hits where a given text segment has more than one root.).
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Vincent Setterholm said:
It will cover the Aramaic portions of the Hebrew Bible, and Kiraz's SEDRA3 data already has roots for the NT Peshitta
So...
Hebrew Bibile and NT Peshitta.
Does that would then mean that the Leiden Peshitta and any other Aramaic/Syriac primary sources will not be tagged for roots? Nor other important sources such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Targums, and the portions of the works of Ephrem that are being published with a Syriac text?
I would think that anything from CAL should also be able to be tagged without too much problem since their database format includes root information (at least the texts I have gotten from them).
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I second that request to have all CAL resources tagged for roots!
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Since this feature is marked as Started in UserVoice and we are now on a new Major Version, I can hope that Vincent might let slip some of the Logos plan for the extent to which resources would be tagged for roots
James W Bennett said:Does that would then mean that the Leiden Peshitta and any other Aramaic/Syriac primary sources will not be tagged for roots? Nor other important sources such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Targums, and the portions of the works of Ephrem that are being published with a Syriac text?
I would think that anything from CAL should also be able to be tagged without too much problem since their database format includes root information (at least the texts I have gotten from them).
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James W Bennett said:
I can hope that Vincent might let slip some of the Logos plan for the extent to which resources would be tagged for roots
On the Semitic side of things, the Lexham Hebrew Bible has support for root searching now (we probably need a better label for it than that). The current drop of data is very focused on the Hebrew Bible (rather than trying to apply any sort of comparative Semitics solution) and is structured more like HALOT than BDB. That is, if all indications are that a verb form derived from the noun (denominatives) then the noun form is tagged as the 'root'. (e.g. The word for 'stone' is probably older than the verb for 'to stone/throw stones'.) These relationships can nest, so Bethlehemite derives from Bethlehem, which itself derives from both beth and lehem, the latter of which might come from laham. By supporting multiple 'root' tags, it becomes easy, for example, to search for Bethlehemite and Bethlehem at the same time without getting hits for every place name that starts with beth or every word that derives from laham. Our hope is that this level of granularity opens up interesting search options for you. With certain exceptions designed to support future data links, if a particular lexeme didn't share any roots with any other lexemes, it often doesn't have a root tag, since searching on that root will produce the exact same results as searching on the lemma.
We do have root data for the NT Peshitta as part of the SEDRA 3 database, but we haven't delivered it yet. (It's actually in LDLS3, but something about the format of those tags prevented them from importing in Logos 4 - now that we have a root data type in Logos 5, we'll be able to correct this. I'm just not sure exactly when I'll get to it.)
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Vincent Setterholm said:
On the Semitic side of things, the Lexham Hebrew Bible has support for root searching now (we probably need a better label for it than that).
"Word family" might be a easier for people to understand than "roots"... not quite as precise, but it could still be understood as "the word family of... (root)".
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