New Feature: Speech Acts of the Old Testament

What Is It?

The Speech Acts of the Old Testament Dataset annotates the books of Genesis, Exodus, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, and Psalms* in an attempt to capture the volition or intent of the speaker or the writer. When we speak, we do things with our language, and this dataset attempts to capture that volition or intention.

For example: a pastor can utter the short sentence “I pronounce you husband and wife,” and create a new social reality for those involved.

Another pertinent example would be statements that can function as commands or questions even though they do not take the syntactical form of interrogatives or imperatives. 

How Does It Work?

The Speech Acts data can be accessed and searched from the context menu. Or, if you know the syntax, can simply be searched in a new search query. You can find all the various types of speech acts in the Speech Acts Dataset Documentation. 

* Annotation of more Old Testament books is planned for future releases.