New Feature: Case Frames Guide Section
What is it?
Case Frames is a new guide section for verbs in the Hebrew Bible and Greek New Testament. For each verb, case frames are a way of listing pieces of information that are required to understand the verb in its context. These required pieces of information are also known as verbal “arguments.”
How does it work?
The distribution of case frames for the verb is shown by the ring graph, and a concordance of case frames is provided. Examining specific instances can help you understand what pieces of information to look for to better understand what is being communicated. For instance, if the verb is ἐσθίω (esthiō "to eat"), it is useful to identify the Agent (the entity eating) and the Patient (the entity being eaten).
Identifying the arguments for the verbs in a passage can provide a better understanding of what a passage is communicating and provide a better foundation for exegesis of the text.
How do I get it?
The Case Frames Guide Section is available in Feature Crossgrade and Silver level base packages and higher.
Rick Brannan
Data Wrangler, Faithlife
My books in print
Comments
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Rick Brannon said:
The distribution of case frames for the verb is shown by the ring graph
Now, can you explain it in words? Silly graphs are of no use to me. I would say that it is all Greek to me, but then I might understand it.
george
gfsomselיְמֵי־שְׁנוֹתֵינוּ בָהֶם שִׁבְעִים שָׁנָה וְאִם בִּגְבוּרֹת שְׁמוֹנִים שָׁנָה וְרָהְבָּם עָמָל וָאָוֶן
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I know it is about verbs and that it has had a mixed reception. I tried to understand it so I won't attempt to explain it[:)]
Dave
===Windows 11 & Android 13
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George Somsel said:
Now, can you explain it in words?
I'll try to explain what I understand and have seen of the feature. First, it applies to verbs only (right now???). Second, it operates on the premise that verbs have different meanings, senses, semantic understandings. What they've tried to do is identify the patterns with which an individual verb is used and correlate a pattern with a particular meaning of the verb. Thus if you see verb 'A' used with pattern 'X' in a particular passage, and the verb predominately has a certain meaning when used in pattern 'X', then the chances are high that it has that meaning in that that passage.
A pattern seems to consist of whether and what kind of subject, whether and what kind of object, result of the verb (e.g. movement in a "direction"), etc. In the screenshot from the start of this thread, there's a pattern with an "Agent" and a "Patient." Those terms have technical meanings - you can click on them to see them in the glossary.
I think if you use the tool on a verb or two that you're familiar with, what they're trying to do will make more sense. Whether you agree with how they classify the patterns and the senses they assign those patterns is another question...
Donnie
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Case frames are built around the semantic roles required by verbs. For example "to buy" requires a purchaser, a thing purchased and a seller. There are optional roles e.g. a payment. So the verb "to buy" is associated with a frame [purchaser] [thing purchased] [seller] [payment]. If you do this for lots of verbs you will discover:
- there are a limited number of roles that are reused
- some roles are required, some are optional
- some roles may be [null] meaning not stated but often implied or acknowledged as missing information.
Why use frames instead of grammar?
- Frames stay the same across different ways of saying it. The frames for "the dog bit me" and "I was bitten by a dog" are the same.
- Frames often show required cultural knowledge e.g. "I purchased a stamp yesterday" implies a seller and a cost which are implied by a "purchased" action. ...
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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Understanding what it does isn't so hard. It inflicts discipline on readers if they lack the "self" variety. Which is good.
It seems intuitive to me if you just look at what it does. What tosses me is the tagging--agent, patient. Maybe I am not astute enough as a ɡrəˈmerēən to remember these terms. I don't recall even studying them, but who knows...probably did. So its a good refresher for that.
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I was one of the curators for this feature. I've written a little bit longer explanation of the feature on my blog and plan to write more about it over the coming weeks:
Explore Meaning with Case Frames in Logos 6
And I'd be glad to try to answer any other questions you might have here.
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Jeremy Thompson said:
I was one of the curators for this feature. I've written a little bit longer explanation of the feature on my blog and plan to write more about it over the coming weeks:
Explore Meaning with Case Frames in Logos 6
And I'd be glad to try to answer any other questions you might have here.
MJ provided a nice framework to drape some details on.
Writing about it is good.[:)].. but since it's a visual tool, engaging in it's use in a video with a diversity of examples, results and the assessments of the results and what could/can be concluded from the results would be a far better explanation. [;)]
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Hi Anthony:
Request for more video explanation duly noted, though I personally think I have great a voice for silent movies
. We do have a video for Semantic Roles up currently and another blog post about semantic roles where I use the example of Jesus baptizing versus being baptized. These aren't strictly about case frames, but semantic roles and case frames are related since case frames are made up of semantic roles. So, the video linked to above may be helpful for the time being and does mention case frames toward the end.0 -
Jeremy Thompson said:
Hi Anthony:
Request for more video explanation duly noted, though I personally think I have great a voice for silent movies. We do have a video for Semantic Roles up currently and another blog post about semantic roles where I use the example of Jesus baptizing versus being baptized. These aren't strictly about case frames, but semantic roles and case frames are related since case frames are made up of semantic roles. So, the video linked to above may be helpful for the time being and does mention case frames toward the end.Thanks Jeremy, I'll have a look. [:)]
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I wonder whether the semantic roles could be made more accessible? They are great for interpretation purposes. So if I study a passage, or even a certain verse, and I want to look up the semantic roles of the arguments of the verbs, it is a bit cumbersome to get to the information. I have to locate each verb, look it up in the Bible Word Study report and look for the right reference. Would it be possible for example to show these labels of the verb arguments in the Word by Word section of the exegetical guide (just like syntactic force)? Or any other possibilities? Right click shows labels in the Information panel?
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We've had requests concerning making this information more accessible at the passage level on another thread (https://community.logos.com/forums/t/93438.aspx). Rick Brannan's response was:
"We're considering ways to make this data more evident at the passage level, and this is a good suggestion. No promises, but know it has been heard."
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Schumitinu said:
I have to locate each verb, look it up in the Bible Word Study report and look for the right reference.
Did you know that BWS can be filtered to particular passages, books, chapters, whatever? Like this:
Rick Brannan
Data Wrangler, Faithlife
My books in print0 -
Rick,
somehow I never noticed this (or was this implemented in Logos 6?), so big thanks for taking time to point out this small but very important (for me at least) feature!
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Rokas said:
somehow I never noticed this (or was this implemented in Logos 6?),
This was available in Logos 5.
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If I know my Hebrew and can read sentences containing the root שוב without the assistance of a lexicon or an interlinear, is this of any use to me? If it is, how?
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I would think that as a translator semantic roles would be of more use to you than grammatical roles. The only individual word work that I've seen that might be of interest to you is oriented towards the verbs and the roles that they require, not the nouns and the roles they can fill.
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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David Knoll said:
If I know my Hebrew and can read sentences containing the root שוב without the assistance of a lexicon or an interlinear, is this of any use to me? If it is, how?
I think in theory it could be, in an analogous way to how the Sense or Translation Ring can be of use. If I am able to recognize that in this particular text, this verb corresponds to a certain case frame, then being able to easily see other examples of that case frame in use in the Hebrew Bible could possibly be of use in the exegesis or translation of a passage. I think that identifying the type of case frame could also at times help avoid certain misinterpretations of a passage, or at least provide an additional argument in favor of a certain interpretation, if a different interpretation would imply a different case frame, that for X reason doesn't seem to work here.
But these haven't been used too much yet in exegetical commentaries - this science is only around 50 years old. Maybe the commentaries that come out in the next few decades will start to take advantage of them and it will become clearer how useful they are or aren't for Biblical studies.
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David Knoll said:
If I know my Hebrew and can read sentences containing the root שוב without the assistance of a lexicon or an interlinear, is this of any use to me? If it is, how?
C'mon, David, we all know that you don't know the first thing about Hebrew. [;)] [:D]
george
gfsomselיְמֵי־שְׁנוֹתֵינוּ בָהֶם שִׁבְעִים שָׁנָה וְאִם בִּגְבוּרֹת שְׁמוֹנִים שָׁנָה וְרָהְבָּם עָמָל וָאָוֶן
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Fr Devin Roza said:David Knoll said:
If I know my Hebrew and can read sentences containing the root שוב without the assistance of a lexicon or an interlinear, is this of any use to me? If it is, how?
I think in theory it could be, in an analogous way to how the Sense or Translation Ring can be of use. If I am able to recognize that in this particular text, this verb corresponds to a certain case frame, then being able to easily see other examples of that case frame in use in the Hebrew Bible could possibly be of use in the exegesis or translation of a passage. I think that identifying the type of case frame could also at times help avoid certain misinterpretations of a passage, or at least provide an additional argument in favor of a certain interpretation, if a different interpretation would imply a different case frame, that for X reason doesn't seem to work here.
But these haven't been used too much yet in exegetical commentaries - this science is only around 50 years old. Maybe the commentaries that come out in the next few decades will start to take advantage of them and it will become clearer how useful they are or aren't for Biblical studies.
I wonder if you could give a concrete example, even a tiny one. I simply don't see what this is for. I am open to using new tools, but how exactly?
George where have you been all this time?
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In Rick's example in the initial post, the Agent--Patient frame of εσθιω versus the Agent--[Patient] frame can often (though not always) distinguish between the "eat something" ("he ate the bread") and the "eat; i.e. dine" ("he ate and was satisfied") meanings of εσθιω. So, for example, this tool could help you to explore places where people "dine" as opposed to where they eat a particular food where the verb is εσθιω.
The tool is another way of categorizing the uses of a verb according to meaning. In essence, that's one thing that resources like Louw and Nida and the Bible Sense Lexicon also do, especially with a text that is tagged with those resources. At a very basic level, they allow you to look at similar types of usages together because particular usages have been categorized according to meaning.
For those who want to delve a bit deeper, I'd recommend Paul Danove's work which was the theoretical basis for the case frames data. He explores the usefulness of semantic roles for traditional exegesis, textual criticism, translation, narrative analysis and lexicography in fairly significant detail.
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David Knoll said:
George where have you been all this time?
I don't have L6 yet so I really can't comment.
george
gfsomselיְמֵי־שְׁנוֹתֵינוּ בָהֶם שִׁבְעִים שָׁנָה וְאִם בִּגְבוּרֹת שְׁמוֹנִים שָׁנָה וְרָהְבָּם עָמָל וָאָוֶן
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Just for the sake of mutual enlightenment and perhaps another perspective. A little seeing of the trees for the forest...internalized or externalize.
http://danielstreett.com/2014/09/01/exegesis-vs-reading-or-how-to-dismantle-an-atomistic-bomb/
I neither fully agree or disagree but rather see both sides as having significant merit. [:D]
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I made a quick test and I like this feature
Gold package, and original language material and ancient text material, SIL and UBS books, discourse Hebrew OT and Greek NT. PC with Windows 11
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OK I think I understand. This is sort of like arranging the occurrences of the verb according to what it binds: subject (valency 1) / subject + object (valency 2) etc.
BTW you may need to fix a bug with BWS. If you type אכל and choose eat (i.e. the verb in Qal) you get אוכל food (noun).
I guess this should be added to the thread about the reliability of searches etc.
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Exactly. This is a terminological problem in the field of linguistics itself. Sometimes different terminology is used for similar things: argument structure, valency, frames, etc. The difference here is that we have analyzed semantic valency (there's syntax underlying the analysis too that we're not showing).
For example, a subject doesn't perform the same function for the active and passive form of a verb - "he ate the food" vs. "the food was eaten". In each of those examples, "food" is in a "Patient" role even though in one case it is an object and in the other case it is a subject. So, the tool also provides a way of dealing with the ambiguity of grammatical terms like "subject" and "object."
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Also, I would add the אכל - אוכל issue to the other thread. I'm just a Hebrew nerd [:D]
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Jeremy Thompson said:
Exactly. This is a terminological problem in the field of linguistics itself. Sometimes different terminology is used for similar things: argument structure, valency, frames, etc. The difference here is that we have analyzed semantic valency (there's syntax underlying the analysis too that we're not showing).
For example, a subject doesn't perform the same function for the active and passive form of a verb - "he ate the food" vs. "the food was eaten". In each of those examples, "food" is in a "Patient" role even though in one case it is an object and in the other case it is a subject. So, the tool also provides a way of dealing with the ambiguity of grammatical terms like "subject" and "object."
You really need to prepare a detailed guide on how to use this with practical examples and explain how you analysed the verbs and the meaning of each term. "Goal", "Theme", "Locative", "Benefactive" are not familiar to the average scholar (at least not in the manner that you use these terms).
And the programmers need to set the default when you type Hebrew characters in BWS to Hebrew and not Aramaic. It is very annoying.
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We have tried to make a start with this with the Lexham Glossary of Semantic Roles. I hope the link works. My first try at a link into the software from the internet I think.
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Jeremy Thompson said:
We have tried to make a start with this with the Lexham Glossary of Semantic Roles. I hope the link works. My first try at a link into the software from the internet I think.
Very interesting. I'll read it through. Perhaps you could put a link to this glossary near the wheel so that the user would know where to find the definitions if he is puzzled.
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David Knoll said:Jeremy Thompson said:
We have tried to make a start with this with the Lexham Glossary of Semantic Roles. I hope the link works. My first try at a link into the software from the internet I think.
....Perhaps you could put a link to this glossary near the wheel so that the user would know where to find the definitions if he is puzzled.
+++[Y]
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