Allow stem searching (not just lemma searching)

One passage where this would be very helpful is one I just looked at: Romans 3:21-26, where various cognates of of the stem 'dik' occur. This stem density, and the 'play on words' Paul uses here, is glossed over by even the most literal of translations. Stem searching and highlighting would make this process of looking for all of this both easier and more productive. In other words, it would increase the 'aha' factor tremendously.

BTW, if I'm asking for something already present in L4 by using in a different strategy, please tell me.

Phil Gons said:

You could do a morph search for lemma:*δικ*, display the results in a datasheet, and then group by lemma. Does this help?

Well, if it worked it could be helpful but I can't get it to work with SR7 (may try 40ab1 later). I get no results, no matter what I do.

I typed lemma:*δικ* in the search box and did a Morph search in the NA27 using Logos Greek Morphology. I get 0 results.

Phil Gons said:

It must be new functionality in the 4.0a beta, as datasheets are.

Okay, I'll look forward to a more stable beta, or wait until an RC comes out before trying it again.

It may be enough. Although I'm not sure a BWS-type report might be more useful at times.

Phil Gons said:

You could do a morph search for lemma:*δικ*, display the results in a datasheet, and then group by lemma. Does this help?

Okay, I got this to work on my laptop (with 40ab2). Very cool. But I'm not seeing the search results highlighted in the text (which would be even cooler).

And only one false positive (sort of): Laodiceans (Λαοδικεύς) - but not Laodicea (Λαοδίκεια) . I'm assuming this is because of the accent mark. But I thought accent marks were ignored for searches?

Just want to bump up this idea again.

Last week I was looking at the shield of faith (πίστις). I almost missed the verb form (πιστεύω) found in Eph 1:13 and 19. TDNT suggests some other terms with the stem πιστ- that would also be important to research for a passage like this one.

My work flow for understanding a word is to examine the usage in the current passage first, current book/epistle, corpus (Pauline, Johannine) and then branch out, and include the LXX. For a term like this one, the work is too much for one sermon, but it would be so good to be able to search the Pauline us of words with the πιστ- stem and look for overlapping and complementary ideas to get an idea about what he may have meant by  the metaphor of "faith" as a shield against fiery demonic attacks.

Anyway, I'd be very grateful if you'd put it on the list of things to explore in the next year or so.

George Somsel said:

In response to your post I just ran a search on πιστ*.  This was a bible search, not a morph search.  I ran it only on the NA27, but I rather imagine you should have no trouble including the LXX as well.  I got 474 hits including πίστιν, πιστεύετε, πιστὸς -- in other words, noun, verb, adj.  I also ran a search for *πιστ* which should have given me any form with a prepositional prefix, but I got the same results.

I ran the same search (πιστ*) and got 465 results in 420 verses (Bible search on NA27 Grammcord, Int.).

Searching for *πιστ* gives me 260 results in 329 verses. The second time it seemed to exclude words that have an accent over the iota, and it does include some false positives (επιστρεφω, e.g.).

It almost works. It's so close.

The false positives with one search suggest (guarantee?) it could happen for others. And so it would be so cool to have a stem data base from which to search.

George Somsel said:

We each seem to be getting different results with the same input.

I'm going to rebuild my index and see if I get different results.