Bible word study odd result

The Bible Word Study will not let me enter "animal". If I type "anim" I only get the choice of "Anim" and "animals". Strangely, if I select "Anim", it brings up the Bible word study for "animal", rather than the city named "Anim".

Similarly a search in the NASB for "anim" brings up verses that mention animals. This appears to be an odd attempt at "stemming" to match all word forms.

But I cannot understand the result for the Bible word study.

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Comments

Graham Criddle

Hi Harry

I get an option for "animal"

What is your highest prioritised / preferred Bible?

Graham

Harry Hahne

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/437077#Comment_437077

I get an option for "animal"

Here is mine. Clearly no option for "animal".

What is your highest prioritised / preferred Bible?

NASB95.

But if I change the default Bible to the NIV, I get the choice of "animal" (singular only). Also "Anim" is lost, even though it appears in the NIV

Nevertheless, the Bible Word Study of "anim" is just plain wrong.

The Hebrew is similar. Lots of stuff about various kinds of animals. Nothing about the city called Anim.

Dave Hooton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/437082#Comment_437082

Nevertheless, the Bible Word Study of "anim" is just plain wrong.

It's an algorithmic match as "anim" is taken to be a root of "animal" ==> the BWS text search sets "Match all word forms".

Anim is not recognised as a place in Bible Facts despite the reference in Josh 15:50

Harry Hahne

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/437110#Comment_437110

It's an algorithmic match as "anim" is taken to be a root of "animal"

I figured this. I am not sure what biblical word "-al" would be a variant form of. I guess it would be a related adjective, like "form" and "formal".

It still does not explain why it would be true for the NASB, but not the ESV and the NIV. BWS in the NASB only lists the plural "animals" and the NIV and ESV list the singular "animal".

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/437139#Comment_437139

I'd suspect a typo in this particular case.

Bradley Grainger (Logos)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/437139#Comment_437139

It's an algorithmic match as "anim" is taken to be a root of "animal"

I figured this. I am not sure what biblical word "-al" would be a variant form of. I guess it would be a related adjective, like "form" and "formal".

The reverse interlinears use "stemming" (in English) to group similar words. (In Greek/Hebrew, we use lemmas to group related words.)

The stemming is completely algorithmic, and can occasionally give unrelated words the same stem (especially when one of those words is not English to begin with). We can put this on the list of exceptions to add the next time we significantly overhaul the reverse interlinears. (There are a lot of dependencies on the output of the stemming algorithm, so it's not a simple change to make.)

It still does not explain why it would be true for the NASB, but not the ESV and the NIV. BWS in the NASB only lists the plural "animals" and the NIV and ESV list the singular "animal".

The autocompleter lists results from your preferred RI. When there are multiple words with the same stem, the most popular one (not just the shortest one) is chosen as the display form to show. This is happening because NASB95 contains more instances of "animals" than "animal", but in NIV/ESV "animal" is more common.

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/437957#Comment_437957

Bradley, it seems so obvious when you say it. Thanks