Hebrew word search: How to search a root word in all its various permutations?

Simon Goh
Simon Goh Member Posts: 9 ✭✭
edited November 20 in English Forum

I am trying to do a word search in Hebrew and I want to locate all the permutations of a root word (qdw or qadosh) in Isaiah. How do I do this? It seems like I can only look for the exact word I type in the search but the other permutations does not show up.

Moreover, what are the differences between the different BHS versions? What are the different "mophologies?" WIVU, WTS, WHM?? Could someone please enlighten me!!

Comments

  • Dave Hooton
    Dave Hooton Member, MVP Posts: 35,674 ✭✭✭

    Go to Morph Search, select BHS / WHM 4.2 and Westminster Hebrew Morphology. Type h:qdw (or h:qadosh) in the Find box, from the dropdown select the word with "holy" against it. You should then see  lemma:קָדוֹשׁ, which is the root word.

    image

     

    To search the book of Isaiah instead of All Passages click on All Passages, type Isaiah in the bottom text box (below) and hit return.

    image

     

    Dave
    ===

    Windows 11 & Android 13

  • Kevin Becker
    Kevin Becker Member Posts: 5,604 ✭✭✭

    The morphologies are different takes on the Hebrew Bible by different people/groups. Each one has a slightly different philosophy of the Hebrew language and categorizes it differently. I recommend going to the Morph search, selecting each morph, type @ to bring up the Morph picker and explore how that particular resource classifies the Hebrew language. I am most used to the Westminster 4.2 morphology, but I'm starting warm up to the Andersen-Forbes especially since the syntax resources use that morphology.

    When it comes to searching Hebrew texts I don't know how to catch all the variations on a single tri-consonantal root because 1) I t think all of the morphology schemes sketch lemmas differently between Nouns and Verbs (i.e. as 3MS Qal and 3S Nouns). 2) The texts differentiates between homophones.

    What you could do is Look up the root you want in the BDB, find all the relevant forms and run multiple searches. Alternately, in the morph search, type: h:qd and look for all the lemma forms that are appropriate (lemmas are indicated by English glosses). I ended up running four searches

    lemma:קָדוֹשׁ
    lemma:קדשׁ
    lemma:קֹדֶשׁ
    lemma:קָדֵשׁ.1.n (no results in Isaiah)

  • Dominick Sela
    Dominick Sela Member Posts: 3,641 ✭✭✭

    Hmm. Didn't recognize this capability.  Are the words with an English word next to them pointing out/designating the root words (in your example, 'holy', 'raging, onrushing')?

    Thanks!

  • Kevin Becker
    Kevin Becker Member Posts: 5,604 ✭✭✭

    Hmm. Didn't recognize this capability.  Are the words with an English word next to them pointing out/designating the root words (in your example, 'holy', 'raging, onrushing')?

    The English glosses indicate lemmas, however, typing h:qdw only gets you part of the way there. Since Logos recognizes multiple transliteration schemes the h:**** syntax  produces a list of possible matches that you have to scroll through to find the appropriate match in the case of h:qdw it misses other forms of that tri-consonantal root, most notable the verb meaning "to be holy"! That is why in my example I omitted the w and was able to find more appropriate lemmas.

  • Dave Hooton
    Dave Hooton Member, MVP Posts: 35,674 ✭✭✭

    Hmm. Didn't recognize this capability.  Are the words with an English word next to them pointing out/designating the root words (in your example, 'holy', 'raging, onrushing')?

    Thanks!

    Yes, they are lemmas/root words. "holy" gave the Hebrew word transliterated as qdw/qadosh (I just happened to remember what that particular word meant!).

    Dave
    ===

    Windows 11 & Android 13

  • Ron
    Ron Member Posts: 1,229

    Go to Morph Search, select BHS / WHM 4.2 and Westminster Hebrew Morphology. Type h:qdw (or h:qadosh) in the Find box, from the dropdown select the word with "holy" against it. You should then see  lemma:קָדוֹשׁ, which is the root word.

    I know very little about Hebrew, so could be way out in left field here, but wouldn't the one above the one marked "holy" actually be the root word since it doesn't have any vowel pointers?

  • Kevin Becker
    Kevin Becker Member Posts: 5,604 ✭✭✭

    I know very little about Hebrew, so could be way out in left field here, but wouldn't the one above the one marked "holy" actually be the root word since it doesn't have any vowel pointers?

    Not with the way that the morphologically tagged texts work, selecting vowel-less words will look for words spelled that way (i.e. in a Hebrew document with unpointed words)

  • Kevin Becker
    Kevin Becker Member Posts: 5,604 ✭✭✭

    Here's another suggestion. If you have a Hebrew keyboard installed you can type lemma:קדש and get this:

    image

    Then the English glosses should show you all of the lemmas which are a subset of the tri-consonantal root.

  • Ron
    Ron Member Posts: 1,229

    Not with the way that the morphologically tagged texts work, selecting vowel-less words will look for words spelled that way (i.e. in a Hebrew document with unpointed words)

    OK, that's helpful to know.  Thanks for the explanation Kevin.

  • Simon Goh
    Simon Goh Member Posts: 9 ✭✭

    Hmm.. apparently I cannot do this at the Logos for Mac ALPHA version yet!!

    Thanks Dave for the info and pictures to guide. It is really helpful.

    But since I have to wait for the Mac version to get up to date, may I ask if the choosing of the correct lemma of qadosh (root word of Holy), will that help me search all the qadosh conjugations in Isaiah. Or only in that specific lemma?

     

  • Simon Goh
    Simon Goh Member Posts: 9 ✭✭

    type @ to bring up the Morph picker and explore how that particular resource classifies the Hebrew language.

    What you could do is Look up the root you want in the BDB, find all the relevant forms and run multiple searches. Alternately, in the morph search, type: h:qd and look for all the lemma forms that are appropriate (lemmas are indicated by English glosses). I ended up running four searches

     

    Thanks for the tips Kevin. Guess I have to go the long and manual way of looking them up individually. May I ask how you came to know about the functions such as typing @ in the search bar? Are there any more of these little tips that helps to define searches? I recently came to know that in Bible Works there are a lot of these functions to help searches.

    Performing this search in BibleWorks seems much straight forward and easy.

     

  • Kevin Becker
    Kevin Becker Member Posts: 5,604 ✭✭✭

    May I ask how you came to know about the functions such as typing @ in the search bar? Are there any more of these little tips that helps to define searches?

    I don't remember exactly where I learned this, but it is documented in the Help file. It's also documented on the Logos wiki. I recommend http://wiki.logos.com/Search_HELP as a basic starting point for learning how to use the Logos search engine.

  • Simon Goh
    Simon Goh Member Posts: 9 ✭✭

    I recommend http://wiki.logos.com/Search_HELP as a basic starting point for learning how to use the Logos search engine.

    This is a brilliant site!!! Exactly what I needed to help me maximize the potential of Logos!!! Thanks a million!!