TIP OF THE DAY 40: Distribution of cases for a name

link to next post TIP OF THE DAY 41: Multiple opinions on morphology; Syntactic force - Logos Forums

Since the forum change has been delayed, I've started adding these posts to the previous tip list. See L/V 10 Tip of the Day

 My apologies. I forgot to manually add the graphs.

QUESTION: Declensions for Greek provide number, grammatical gender, and case. What forms are identical and must be distinguished by context?

SOFTWARE: To my surprise, I have not been able to find this documented in Logos.

ANSWER: pieced together from a variety of sources:

Greek declension classes:

• First declension (vowel endings)
• Second declension (vowel endings)
• Third declension (consonant endings)

Most irregular forms are remnants of additional declension classes that have merged into these three.

Greek declension grammatical gender:

• Masculine
• Feminine
• Neuter

Greek declension number:

• Singular
• Plural

Remnants of the dual appear as irregular forms.

Greek cases:

• Nominative
• Genitive
• Dative
• Accusative
• Vocative

The older locative, ablative, and instrumental cases have been folded into dative, genitive, and dative respectively cases in koine Greek.

A Greek reverse paradigm chart from ChatGPT via Justin Gatlin.

Here’s an expanded version of the Greek reverse paradigm chart, covering the major endings with possible declensions, genders, cases, and numbers. This should serve as a comprehensive reference to identify ambiguous endings in Ancient Greek:

Observations on Ambiguity

1. -ος: Appears across the 1st, 2nd, and some 3rd declensions, with functions in both singular and plural forms, making it one of the more versatile and ambiguous endings.
2. -ων: Serves as the genitive plural across all declensions, making it universally ambiguous.
3. -α: Used across 1st declension feminine singular and plural as well as 2nd declension neuter plural, creating potential for ambiguity.
4. -οι: Found in the 2nd declension masculine plural nominative/vocative, but also sometimes in 3rd declension genitive singular.

This table could be printed or expanded further with rare forms if you need a more exhaustive chart. Let me know if you’d like additional details on any particular endings or additional examples!

In the table, identical letters indicate indistinguishable forms:

Whenever one of these ambiguous declined forms is found, remember that the Logos coding is an interpretation based on context, not solely an application of morphology.

QUESTION: What is the distribution of cases for a name?

SOFTWARE: Method 1: This is a many step process that allow one to find the elements of the search argument slowly.

1. Open a Bible. I chose the NRSV. Remember that the morphology is not against the English but against the original language text used by the reverse interlinear. To determine that text that is, open the information panel on the Bible, scroll down to the reference interlinear section and, for this case, check the New Testament 2009 SBL Greek New Testament.
2. Navigate to a passage which refers to Paul the apostle by name not by an alternative name. The alternative names are often multi-part lexical units not handled well by Logos or by morphology coding. Acts 15:2 is an appropriate example.
3. Select Paul.
4. Right click to open the Context Menu
5. Select lemma (for Paul) on the left tab side; on the action side, select the last option under search which specifies both the lemma and morphology: lemma.g:Παῦλος@NASM-. For our purposes, where Paul is always masculine, singular this can be shortened to lemma.g:Παῦλος@NA
6. Now duplicate the search panel 4 times so that one can search for each of the 5 cases.:
   1. lemma.g:Παῦλος@NA
   2. lemma.g:Παῦλος@NG
   3. lemma.g:Παῦλος@ND
   4. lemma.g:Παῦλος@NN
   5. lemma.g:Παῦλος@NV
   6. Note Acts 13:7 in the dative results there is a result for Sergius Paulus. To eliminate this false positive, we must add a requirement that the lemma with the requested morphology must be at the same place (INTERSECTS) and the person.Paul (the apostle). Our 5 searches now have arguments of:
      1. lemma.g:Παῦλος@NA INTERSECTS person:Paul
      2. lemma.g:Παῦλος@NG INTERSECTS person:Paul
      3. lemma.g:Παῦλος@ND INTERSECTS person:Paul
      4. lemma.g:Παῦλος@NN INTERSECTS person:Paul
      5. lemma.g:Παῦλος@NV INTERSECTS person:Paul
      6. Logos charting does not handle this sort of data. In fact, the visualizations in the Passage Analysis tool are closer to meeting our needs. As a result, I copied the counts into an Excel file, and created a chart within Excel.

1. I now have a distribution chart of the Paul the apostle referred to by his proper name (excluding his prior name Saul) across the morphological cases.
2. To expand it to include the name Saul, go to Acts 13:9, and select Saul.
3. Right click to open the Context Menu
4. Select lemma (for Saul) on the left tab side; on the action side, select the last option under search which specifies both the lemma and morphology: lemma.g:Σαῦλος@NNSM-. For our purposes, where Saul is always masculine, singular this can be shortened to lemma.g:Σαῦλος@NN.
5. We can then modify the search arguments to accept either lemma, trusting that our current person selection will screen out any unwanted Sauls.
   1. (lemma.g:Σαῦλος@NA OR lemma.g:Παῦλος@NA) INTERSECTS person:Paul
   2. (lemma.g:Σαῦλος@NG OR lemma.g:Παῦλος@NG) INTERSECTS person:Paul
   3. (lemma.g:Σαῦλος@ND OR lemma.g:Παῦλος@ND) INTERSECTS person:Paul
   4. (lemma.g:Σαῦλος@NN OR lemma.g:Παῦλος@NN) INTERSECTS person:Paul
   5. (lemma.g:Σαῦλος@NV OR lemma.g:Παῦλος@NV) INTERSECTS person:Paul

Method 2 – Direct route

1. Open a Search panel
2. Select Morph search – I chose to stick with the NRSV knowing that the actual search is against the Greek.
3. For the search argument use (lemma.g:Σαῦλος@N OR lemma.g:Παῦλος@N) INTERSECTS person:Paul i.e. the lemma Saul or Paul in noun form intersects the person Paul the apostle). Note I do not specify the case.
4. Select the analysis view.
5. Display the following fields, selectable on the header:
   1. Reference
   2. Previous content
   3. Result
   4. Next context
   5. Part of speech
   6. Case (Logos Greek)
   7. Sort by Case by dragging the heading up above the heading line
   8. Note that the nominative has gained one entry and four new entries have no case assigned to them. Those without a case are all English which is not aligned to the Greek text either because of an alternative reading or the addition of words in English to provide an accurate, smooth translation. Identifying the additional nominative entry will be covered in a later post.

Method 3: Using syntactic force rather than lemmas

1. Open a Search panel
2. Select Morph search – I chose to stick with the NRSV knowing that the actual search is against the Greek.
3. For the search argument use SGNTSyntacticForce:"proper name" INTERSECTS person:Paul i.e. a word  with the syntactic force of a proper name intersects the person Paul the apostle). Note I do not specify the case. I get the format for the syntactic force data type through the Context Menu.
4. Select the analysis view.
5. Display the following fields, selectable on the header:
   1. Reference
   2. Previous content
   3. Result
   4. Next context
   5. Part of speech
   6. Case (Logos Greek)
   7. Sort by Case by dragging the heading up above the heading line
   8. Note that nearly all the cases have additional entries. To see why, in a rough sense, remove the sort by case and sort by part of speech.
   9. The part of speech is no longer limited to nouns. There are also articles, indeclinables, adjectives, verbs and prepositions in the  results.

QUESTION: What tool does Logos/Verbum offer for the distribution of cases?

SOFTWARE: Tool > Passage > Passage analysis > Morph river. For this case, I looked at results for nouns by case.

QUESTION: What patterns should I look for in morph rivers?

ANSWER: From Perplexity:

The distribution of morphological cases in a text can provide valuable insights into the grammatical structure, style, and even content of the writing. Here are some key things you can learn from analyzing case distribution:

Grammatical Structure

Syntactic Roles

The frequency and distribution of cases can reveal the predominant syntactic structures in the text[1]. For example:

-            A high frequency of nominative cases often indicates many subject-verb constructions.

-            Frequent accusative cases suggest a focus on direct objects and transitive verbs.

-            Prevalence of dative cases may point to indirect objects or certain prepositional phrases.

Clause Complexity

The ratio of different cases can hint at the complexity of clauses:

-            A balanced distribution of nominative, accusative, and dative cases might indicate complex sentences with multiple arguments.

-            Dominance of nominative and accusative cases could suggest simpler subject-verb-object structures.

Stylistic Characteristics

Formal vs. Informal Language

Case distribution can reflect the formality level of the text:

-            More frequent use of genitive cases might indicate a more formal or literary style.

-            Higher prevalence of nominative and accusative cases could suggest a more conversational tone.

Narrative vs. Descriptive Text

The balance of cases can reveal the text's primary function:

-            A high proportion of nominative cases might indicate a narrative-heavy text with many actors and actions.

-            More frequent use of genitive cases could suggest descriptive text with many modifiers and possessives.

Content Analysis

Topic Focus

Case distribution can provide clues about the text's subject matter:

-            Frequent instrumental cases might indicate a focus on methods or tools, common in technical writing.

-            A high number of locative cases could suggest a text centered on locations or spatial relationships.

Argument Structure

The distribution of cases can reveal the complexity of arguments presented:

-            A balanced distribution of nominative and accusative cases might indicate a text with many actions and direct objects, common in procedural writing.

-            Frequent dative cases could suggest a focus on recipients or beneficiaries, potentially indicating a text about social interactions or transactions.

Language-Specific Insight

Language Typology

Case distribution can provide insights into the typological characteristics of the language:

-            Languages with rich case systems might show a more even distribution across various cases.

-            Languages with fewer cases might rely more heavily on word order, reflected in a higher frequency of nominative and accusative cases.

Diachronic Analysis

In historical linguistics, changes in case distribution over time can reveal language evolution:

-            A decrease in certain case frequencies might indicate ongoing case syncretism.

-            Shifts in case usage patterns could suggest changes in syntactic structures or semantic roles.

By analyzing the distribution of morphological cases, researchers can gain a deeper understanding of the text's grammatical structure, stylistic features, and content focus. This analysis can be particularly valuable in comparative studies, stylometry, and diachronic linguistic research.[1]

[1] https://oxfordre.com/linguistics/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.001.0001/acrefore-9780199384655-e-247?d=%2F10.1093%2Facrefore%2F9780199384655.001.0001%2Facrefore-9780199384655-e-247&p=emailAM9wGf9pUEkcg and https://www.quirks.com/articles/using-morphological-content-analysis-to-mine-insights-from-qualitative-interviews and https://serious-science.org/grammatical-case-morphology-syntax-and-word-order-9354 and https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/morphological-analysis-in-nlp/ and https://oxfordre.com/linguistics/abstract/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.001.0001/acrefore-9780199384655-e-131?result=1&rskey=ASVUCh and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_morphology