Manuscript form (morphology), lemma, root, sense, role

MJ. Smith
MJ. Smith MVP Posts: 53,105
edited November 21 in English Forum

Among the things that Logos does well is distinguish between:

  • Grammatical form/manuscript form - the term as it is seen in the manuscript although Logos does not indicate ambiguous forms
  • Lemma - the form of the term as it appears as a headword in the dictionary. Logos indicates homographs with an appended number. An example of a homograph in English is "go" which is a verb traced through Old English to West Germanic ... vs "go" which is a noun traced through Japanese. The words look the same but are unrelated.
  • Root - the core of the word which often with different prefixes and suffixes or etymological history is shared with a family of word related etymologically
  • Sense - the meaning of the word; words sharing a meaning in a particular context are called synonyms.

There are at least two other essential attributes of a term that Logos codes but has not integrated into the core processes. As a result, especially in searches, users use the grammatical form (morphology) as if it were grammatical role.

  • Grammatical role - the role of the term in the sentence structure
  • Semantic role - the role of the term in the meaning of the sentence

These attributes are not shown in the Context Menu where they should be.  Please vote to have them (re)instated at Add semantic roles back into Context Menu | Faithlife and Add grammatic roles to Context menu | Faithlife

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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Comments

  • Veli Voipio
    Veli Voipio MVP Posts: 2,015

    I voted but at the same time I feel that the context menu grows longer and more complex.

    Could Logos have something similar as in Adobe and Autodesk software: have context sensitive toolbars and/or small windows/tabs that the user can place on the screen. So that the user can choose whether they are visible or not. Not replacing the context menu but adding to it and properly synchronized.

    Gold package, and original language material and ancient text material, SIL and UBS books, discourse Hebrew OT and Greek NT. PC with Windows 11

  • MJ. Smith
    MJ. Smith MVP Posts: 53,105

    Could Logos have something similar as in Adobe and Autodesk software: have context sensitive toolbars and/or small windows/tabs that the user can place on the screen. So that the user can choose whether they are visible or not. Not replacing the context menu but adding to it and properly synchronized.

    I agree that the Context Menu is overly complex. I had thought more along the lines of being able to select what shows. For example, I cannot imagine a use case where I would use syllables or accents and would like to suppress them. I would also suppress preaching theme on the basis of personality quirks. I would also like to suppress Strong's numbers but would probably argue that they should be under "core attributes" which the user could not suppress.

    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."

  • Dave Hooton
    Dave Hooton MVP Posts: 35,674

    I agree that the Context Menu is overly complex. I had thought more along the lines of being able to select what shows. For example, I cannot imagine a use case where I would use syllables or accents and would like to suppress them. I would also suppress preaching theme on the basis of personality quirks. I would also like to suppress Strong's numbers but would probably argue that they should be under "core attributes" which the user could not suppress.

    Syllables, accents and preaching themes can happily be discarded i.e. made selectable[:)]. I would also include Events, preferring to use Search suggestions for the cases of interest.

    But Strong's is indeed "core"

    Dave
    ===

    Windows 11 & Android 13

  • Dave Hooton
    Dave Hooton MVP Posts: 35,674

    There are at least two other essential attributes of a term that Logos codes but has not integrated into the core processes. As a result, especially in searches, users use the grammatical form (morphology) as if it were grammatical role.

    • Grammatical role - the role of the term in the sentence structure
    • Semantic role - the role of the term in the meaning of the sentence

    These attributes are not shown in the Context Menu where they should be.

    These  (from Clause Participants) could be as painful as syllables and accents i.e. definitely not core. The BWS section is the better place to investigate these.

    EDIT: I was too hasty in making that sort of comparison. But if we consider πιστεύω (to believe) at Jn 2:24 the BWS Grammatical Role is stated to be With Object...Jesus. The right-click SGNT Syntactic Force of the word is Finite Verb because the Direct Object is the adjacent pronoun. Similarly with the word at Ro 10:14.

    The noun νόμος (law) does not have any Semantic Roles  And I'm not sure how one would handle its Grammatical roles of In relation to...xxxxxx.  At Ga 3:10 the first instance has 1 role whilst the second has 2 roles. The SGNT Syntactic Force of both instances is that of a Genitive.

    Dave
    ===

    Windows 11 & Android 13

  • MJ. Smith
    MJ. Smith MVP Posts: 53,105

    The BWS section is the better place to investigate these.

    Because they are core for me and I very rarely use the BWS, this is not a satisfactory solution to me. And I should hope as seminarians get better trained in linguistics esp. discourse analysis, more of them will insist on using semantic analysis rather than pretending grammatical analysis serves a semantic purpose.

    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."

  • Dave Hooton
    Dave Hooton MVP Posts: 35,674

    Because they are core for me and I very rarely use the BWS, this is not a satisfactory solution to me

    See my edited comment above.

    I now note that Jn 2:24 has three Grammatical Roles for the one instance, and three Semantic Roles.

    Dave
    ===

    Windows 11 & Android 13