Clause search not finding hit in John 12:49

The reason I came across the original issue is that for a sermon I am preparing I am interested in how many times God is spoken of as being involved in "sending" in John's Gospel.

This post shows a more fuller outline of the issue across the whole of John's Gospel.

I ran a search on "(send, sent)" in that Gospel (using the NIV84 translation), created a Passage List from the results and manually went through and removed those where God was not the subject. This resulted in a list of 44 passages which gave me the result I was looking for. This is probably the way I would have done it in Logos 4 but clearly with Logos 5 the Clause Search should help with this.

So I tried to run a Clause Search for this using "subject:god verb:send". The first problem I found (which has been discussed elsewhere and I believe Logos wants to make this easier) is that there are choices presented as to which form of "send" I am interested in.

So I run each of these searches and find that the top 3 are the only ones which return results for John's Gospel. Creating a Passage List from each successful search and merging them together I end up with a composite but which just has 37 passages.

(I get the same results if, instead of using the English verbs, I use the two lemmas associated with sending in John's Gospel - ἀποστέλλω and πέμπω).

The differences between them are shown below:

Trying to determine the reasons for these:

John 1:6 doesn't match because the verb "sent" is tagged as referring to "John the Baptist" as opposed to "God". This looks like a tagging error.

In John 5:37, "sent" is tagged as "God" but I think it doesn't match because "who sent me" and "Father" are in separate clauses:

John 6:44 also is due to "Father" and "sent me" being in separate clauses:

This "separate clause" issue also explains why John 8:16, 8:18, 12:49 and 14:24.

So there are really two issues here:

1. what looks like a tagging problem in John 1:6
2. 6 times where the subject and the verb are in separate clauses and so don't match

The second issue is the one that concerns me most as it means I don't know how to use the Clause Search to answer questions like "how many times does God send in John's Gospel".

Is it intended to answer questions like this and - if so - what needs to be done to make it work?

Thanks, Graham  

Hi MJ

MJ. Smith said:

Look at http://community.logos.com/forums/p/63104/444596.aspx#444596  for an example of the tagging issues

Yes, I had seen that comprehensive report

MJ. Smith said:

What I'm finding is that while much of the tagging is well-done there are sections with a significant error rate.

Yes, agreed. But in 6 of the 7 cases I reported above the issue isn't tagging but clausal structures. I am keen to understand whether Logos see that something needs to be done about this as - in my view - it causes real issues in the use of the Clause Search (while I understand that they are actually reporting properly against the clausal structures).

MJ. Smith said:

At the moment, I try to verify every Search/Comprehensive List by trying to reproduce the results  from another angle.

Yes, I am getting to the same place - but not where I want to be[:)]

Graham

NB.Mick said:

Graham Criddle said:

John 1:6 doesn't match because the verb "sent" is tagged as referring to "John the Baptist" as opposed to "God". This looks like a tagging error.

I must admit that I'm not a Greek scholar or anything like this. But you were looking for God to be the subject of a clause. I understand "the man" (i.e. John) to be the subject - the problem is that the sentence is in passive voice. It shouldn't be tagged with God as subject - a clause search with God as person should catch it. 

Hi Mick

Thanks for that - and it's a fair point.

So I think there may not be a tagging issue here after all - although on a related note I find it strange that "God" in 1:6 is tagged as both "God" and "John the Baptist" but that is a separate issue[:)]

Thanks, Graham 

Hi MJ

MJ. Smith said:

I think this is the same issue as was discussed much earlier re: Abraham being tagged as his own father due to an appositive/relative phrase. Logos weighed in with their rationale - links for both the phrase as a whole and for the structure within the phrase.

I remember now[:)]

MJ. Smith said:

The issue of the clause structure is more serious - by definition a clause must contain a subject and a verb although the subject may be implied rather than being explicit. The tagging should be picking up implied subjects, in Greek implied via conjugation.

This, I think, is the key issue.

The clauses seem to be tagged as "Minor Clauses" (as Dave pointed out above) which are defined as having no verbal function:

Minor Clause: Minor clauses are clauses without any predication — no Verbal Function or Predicate Function — that contain no assertions or propositions. They function interpersonally (vocative direct address or interjection to gain attention/alert) or textually (left-dislocated focus nominal phrases, e.g. as for the game, I did not get to watch it).

Andi Wu and Randall K. Tan, Cascadia Syntax Graphs of the New Testament: Glossary ( (Logos Bible Software, 2009)).

And I don't know enough to know whether this is really a bug or it just not doing what I want[:)]

MJ. Smith said:

This is an error in the application not in the data and should be reported as a bug.

Thanks for reporting it - I'm looking forward to seeing what Logos say about it

MJ. Smith said:

Have a joyous Christmas.

And to you.

I've just come back from leading a Carol Service and will shortly be going out for our Christmas Eve Communion Service.

A really blessed and exciting time.

Graham 

MJ. Smith said:

But there is a standard clause, marked as such under the minor clause

But, unless I am missing your point, while "sent" is in that standard clause "Father is not. Which I assume is why it is not matching.

I'm not arguing with you - I really want this to work - just trying to clarify in my mind why it isn't doing so!

MJ. Smith said:

Graham Criddle said:

But, unless I am missing your point, while "sent" is in that standard clause "Father is not. Which I assume is why it is not matching.

The tag that should make it be picked up is on the "who" which is within the clause. In the several cases on your list that I checked, the relative pronoun was tagged. It is tagged as God ... I would argue that it should be tagged God the Father so in that sense it is a coding error but  ...

Thanks MJ.

Tagging the "who" was the thing I had missed. That should do it!

Graham