TIP OF THE DAY 41: Multiple opinions on morphology; Syntactic force

MJ. Smith
MJ. Smith MVP Posts: 53,108
edited November 20 in English Forum

link to next post TIP OF THE DAY 42: Filling in some gaps: onomastics and numbers in group names - 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

TOPIC: Syntactic force

QUESTION: What is the relationship between morphological case and syntactic force in koine Greek?

ANSWER: from Perplexity

The relationship between morphological case and syntactic force in Koine Greek is complex and multifaceted. Here are the key points to understand:

1. Morphological case vs. syntactic force:

-            Morphological case refers to the inflectional marking on nouns, pronouns, and adjectives that indicates their grammatical function.

-            Syntactic force refers to the actual syntactic/semantic role that a word plays in a particular sentence, based on its context and relationship to other elements.

2. Alignment and divergence:

-            In many instances, morphological case aligns with syntactic force. For example, the nominative case often indicates the subject of a sentence.

-            However, there are scenarios where morphological case and syntactic force can diverge, especially in Koine Greek.

3. Case functions in Koine Greek:

-            Koine Greek has five cases: nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, and vocative.

-            Each case has multiple functions. For instance, the genitive case can indicate possession, dependence, partitive relationships, or separation.

4. Complexity of case usage:

-            The distribution of accusative, genitive, and dative marking on object complements in Classical Greek (which influences Koine Greek) is atypical and complex.

-            Some verbs may take objects in cases other than the accusative, which is traditionally associated with direct objects.

5. Semantic roles and case:

-            Case marking in Koine Greek often correlates with semantic roles, but this correlation is not always straightforward.

-            For example, the dative case can indicate indirect objects, location, or instrument, among other functions.

6. Historical changes:

-            Koine Greek represents a transitional period in the Greek language, where some case functions were shifting.

-            There was a trend towards simplification of the case system, with some functions of the dative case being taken over by prepositional phrases.

7. Context-dependent interpretation:

   - The syntactic force of a word in Koine Greek often depends on the context and the specific verb used, rather than solely on its morphological case.

In conclusion, while morphological case provides important grammatical information in Koine Greek, the syntactic force of a word is not always directly predictable from its case alone. Interpreting the precise function of a word often requires consideration of the broader syntactic context, the semantics of the verb, and an understanding of the various functions each case can perform. This complexity makes the study of case and syntax in Koine Greek a nuanced and challenging field.[1]

 

TRIVIA QUESTION: Give a brief history of computerized parsing of Biblical languages.

Software: from Perplexity, lightly modified.

Here's a brief history of parsing Biblical Hebrew and Koine Greek by computers, including the Asia Bible Society project:

1950s-1960s:

  • Early attempts at computational analysis of biblical texts began but were limited by technology.

Early Developments (1970s-1980s)

For Hebrew:

-            Andersen-Forbes database work began in 1970

-            WIVU (later ETCBC) database project started in Amsterdam in 1977

-            Westminster Leningrad Codex project initiated by J. Alan Groves in the 1980s

For Greek:

-            GRAMCORD Greek New Testament published in 1977

-            Analytical Greek New Testament by Timothy and Barbara Friberg published in 1981

-            MorphGNT project initiated by Robert Kraft in the 1980s

Emergence of Bible Software (1990s)

Bible software packages offering search and analysis tools emerged:

-            BibleWorks (1992)

-            Logos (1992)

-            Accordance (1994)

Advanced Parsing and Syntax (2000s-Present)

More sophisticated syntactic parsing projects emerged:

-            For Hebrew: continued development of ETCBC, Andersen-Forbes, and other databases

-            For Greek: OpenText.org project (early 2000s)

Asia Bible Society Project:

-            Initiated in the early 2000s

-            Focused on syntactic analysis of the Greek New Testament

-            Developed alongside OpenText.org as one of two major projects advancing computational syntactic analysis of the New Testament

Recent Trends

-            Application of statistical and machine learning approaches to parsing

-            Development of treebanks and dependency parsing for both Hebrew and Greek texts

-            Increased focus on making parsed data accessible for scholarly research

Integration Efforts

Oliver Glanz at the Center of Biblical Languages and Computing (CBLC) at Andrews University is working to bring together data from the OpenText project and the Asia Bible Society in Text-Fabric format

Ongoing Developments

-            Continued refinement of parsing algorithms and tools

-            Expansion of corpora to include non-biblical texts (e.g., Dead Sea Scrolls, papyri)

-            Exploration of interfaces between syntax and other aspects of grammar, such as prosody

The field continues to evolve, with ongoing efforts to improve parsing accuracy, handle textual variants, and integrate parsing tools with other digital humanities resources for biblical studies. The trend is moving towards a re-unification of traditional hermeneutical and exegetical analysis with computational discoveries of patterns in texts.[2]

 

QUESTION: How do I find the case for a specific lemma occurrence?

SOFTWARE: There are several places to view the data either on a morphologically tagged original language book or on a translation with a reverse interlinear.

ANSWER: Method 1: Hover (mouse over)

  1. Hover over a word.
  2. Unless the word is added in translation, a pop-up with the lemma, the morphology spelled out (not the code string), and additional information such as Strong’s and Louw-Nida numbers appears in the lower left of the screen.

Method 2: Context menu

  1. Right click on a word.
  2. The word section on the left (tab) side of the Context menu is separated from the remainder of the tab entries by lines. The section expands and contracts as a unit. It contains the morphology both as a code string and spelled out.
  3. If you select the morphology tab, its spelled-out text becomes the heading for the right (action) side of the Context menu.

Method 3: Information panel

  1. Open the information panel by:
    1. Clicking the bottom entry on the left side of the Context menu i.e. Show more information OR
    2. Typing Show Information into the Command box and selecting Show Information in the Tools section OR
    3. Tools > Lookup > Information
    4. Verify that it is set either to hover or click.
    5. Click/hover on a word in your Bible and the information panel should populate
    6. The morphology appears in the Word Info section both as a code string and spelled out.

QUESTION: How do I find if the different morphologies in Logos/Verbum classify a word differently?

SOFTWARE: The Word-by-Word section of the exegetical Guide provides this information. From the Help file:

Morph — the morphological characteristics of this word in the verse are listed next. A typical morphology for a noun is "noun, masculine, singular, nominative," where each characteristic is separated by a comma. In this example, "noun" specifies the part of speech, "masculine" specifies the grammatical gender, "singular" specifies the number, and "nominative" the case. Each morph characteristic is shown as a hyperlink. Hover over a morph characteristic to see it defined, and click it to view a definition (if the Library has morphological terminology glossaries). Sometimes a +/- sign will appear in the list of morph characteristics. The part before the +/- sign represents the morph database selected at the top of the section, and the part after the sign represents differing opinions from other databases present in your library. Hover over the sign for a detailed explanation of where those differences occur.[3]

ANSWER:

  1. Open Bible. I use the preferred Bible icon on the application tool bar.
  2. Home > Link set. Choose an unused letter for your linked set.
  3. Open a Word-by-Word guide
    1. Enter Open Word by Word into the Command Box; select Open Word by Word (Bible reference) under Guides in the Selection menu OR
    2. Tools > Bible Reference Guides > Word by Word
    3. Open the Panel menu of the guide.
    4. Set the linked set to the same letter as you set your Bible.
    5. Whenever you see the +/- sign in the part-of-speech-morphology-syntactic force line, there are multiple parsings suggested for the word. Acts 13:1 should find you several examples.
    6. Hover over the +/- sign to see the other morphologies.

 

QUESTION: How do I find the syntactic force for a specific lemma occurrence?

SOFTWARE: From the Help file:

Syntactic Force — certain New Testament versions may display another category just after the morph characteristics. The portion to the right of the pipe character ("|") describes the grammatical/syntactic role the word plays in the verse (for example, "vocative" or "double accusative") according to the Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament. Click the syntactic force category to open the associated glossary, or hover over it to view the definition in a popup.[4]

Re: Word by Word guide: Following the pipe character, the syntactic force is shown. It is drawn from Lukaszewski, Albert L., Mark Dubis, and J. Ted Blakley. The Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament, SBL Edition: Expansions and Annotations. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2011.

ANSWER:

Method 1: Context menu

  1. Right click on a word.
  2. A dark diamond icon precedes each datatype entry. The datatypes are in alphabetical order. Scroll down to syntactic force.
  3. Because syntactic force datatypes come in pairs, click on the > to expand the entry.
  4. Select a syntactic force datatype and the action side of the Context menu will change to options related to syntactic force.
  5. Note that there is an option to look the value of syntactic force up in the glossary Lukaszewski, Albert L. The Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament Glossary. Lexham Press, 2007.

Method 2: Word by Word

  1. Open Bible. I use the preferred Bible icon on the application tool bar.
  2. Home > Link set. Choose an unused letter for your linked set.
  3. Open a Word-by-Word guide
    1. Enter Open Word by Word into the Command Box; select Open Word by Word (Bible reference) under Guides in the Selection menu OR
    2. Tools > Bible Reference Guides > Word by Word
    3. Open the Panel menu of the guide.
    4. Set the linked set to the same letter as you set your Bible.
    5. Optional: Open Lukaszewski, Albert L., and Mark Dubis. The Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament: Expansions and Annotations. Logos Bible Software, 2009.
    6. Home > Link set. Set to the same letter as the Bible and Word by Word Guide.
    7. As you move through your Bible, the Word-by-Word guide will scroll along.
    8. On the same line as the morphology you will see a pipe character |. The syntactic force immediately follows the pipe.
    9. The notes which expand/explain the syntactic force will also scroll along providing additional information.

 


[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koine_Greek_grammar and https://brill.com/view/journals/jgl/23/1/article-p97_5.xml?language=en and https://www.vaia.com/en-us/explanations/greek/greek-morphology/greek-case-endings/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_role and https://books.openbookpublishers.com/10.11647/obp.0264/ch7.xhtml and https://www.britannica.com/topic/Greek-language/Morphology-and-syntax

[2] http://www.diva-portal.se/smash/get/diva2:1665230/FULLTEXT01.pdf and https://books.openbookpublishers.com/10.11647/obp.0358.05.pdf and https://unisapressjournals.co.za/index.php/JSEM/article/download/4628/2949/24367 and https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/C0DB71F2C87CD0CE3B33DE6CD6056C29/S1351324923000384a.pdf/creating_a_largescale_diachronic_corpus_resource_automated_parsing_in_the_greek_papyri_and_beyond.pdf

and https://blogs.blueletterbible.org/blb/2021/02/19/new-language-tool-hebrew-parsing/

[3] Verbum Help (Bellingham, WA: Faithlife, 2024).

[4] Verbum Help (Bellingham, WA: Faithlife, 2024).

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