Jump to content

Searching for prep on verb & following


Rod Decker

Recommended Posts

It's generally considered good Greek style to use a compound verb followed by the same preposition. E.g., εἰσῆλθεν εἰς ... This seems redundant in English, but is not in Greek. Is there any way to search for this sort of sequence without having to specify every preposition manually? I know you can specify the beginning of a word with a wild card, but how do you get the search to match the same (unspecified) string in sequence?

 

Manually one could search for:

 

[VERB]@εισ* <FOLLOWED BY> <WITHIN 2 Words> [prep]@εις

 

and get 23 examples in Mark (46 "hits" since it counts both words), all of which are valid instances of what I'm looking for. Then one could do the same with ἐκ (9), ἀπο (5), etc. With ἐκ you also have to allow for ἐξ-, etc.

 

I realize this is a bad week to be asking technical questions since the Accordance team is mostly in Boston, but perhaps they will check in occasionally or someone else has solved this perplexity already.

Edited by Rod Decker
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi Rod,

 

You need to use a construct search (File > New Construct > Greek) whenever you want to express a relationship of agreement between two or more terms (in this case, one of the roots of the verb matching the root of the preposition).

 

See the attached shot of a construct window, which you would need to use the [LINK] command to insert as a search argument into a GNT-T window. This search gave me 244 hits in 239 verses.

 

J. P.

 

post-72-1227565832_thumb.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks JP. That makes good sense. But the data isn't correct. It only finds 23 exs in Mark, but there are that many instances with εἰς alone (1:21a, b; 2:1, 26; 3:1; 5:13; 6:10, 56; 7:15, 17, 18, 19, 24; 9:25, 28; 9:43, 45, 47; 10:15; 11:2, 11, 15; 16:5)--and NONE of these are on your hit list. Any ideas?

 

(I originally floated an idea here as to why it might not have worked, but realized while eating supper that I'd conflated two prepositions in my suggestion, so I've deleted that. it surely made no sense as it was!)

Edited by Rod Decker
Link to comment
Share on other sites

While we're at it, here's a related search question: is it possible to search for all compound verbs? E.g., what compound verb forms occur in Mark? I'd think there ought to be a way to do it, but I can't seem to find any combinations that describe two parts of the same word (i.e., prep + verb as one word).

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

I started this topic while most of the Accord staff were in Boston, but it's not been resolved yet. Perhaps now that you're back and getting things back to normal (if moving to a new server is normal!), would someone have time to help me sort out the two search perplexities in the thread above? (JP's suggestion did not produce accurate data, and then I added a variation of the search.) Thanks.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Rod,

 

J.P.'s search should have worked (although his inclusion of the ROOT item with a wildcard in each column is unnecessary). The reason it misses the instances with εἰς appears to be because the root of εἰσπορεύομαι is listed as εἰς-2 (note the homograph number), while the preposition itself is not given that homograph number. I'm not sure at this point if this problem lies in the tagging of the GNT-T, the Greek Roots file, or both. I'll have to look into it. In the meantime, combining your original search with JP's search using an OR command ought to get you all the results in a single search.

 

In terms of looking for compound verbs, you could create a construct with a VERB item and a ROOT item in the same column. In the select Root forms dialog, you would then select each of the Greek prepositions (apo, ek, en, eis, etc.).

 

Hope this helps, and sorry for the delay in getting back to you.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In terms of looking for compound verbs, you could create a construct with a VERB item and a ROOT item in the same column. In the select Root forms dialog, you would then select each of the Greek prepositions (apo, ek, en, eis, etc.).

 

Thanks--and no problem on the delay. I know how busy you've been the past few weeks.

 

As to the construct search, first, I'd never thought of using it for a "one-col. search." I've always viewed it as a tool for combining things in cols that you can't specify together. Learn something new every time! (If only I can remember that!)

 

But... I can't make it work. I'm getting errors. See 2 attached screenshots. First complains that ὑπο isn't valid, so I deleted that form at the end of the list. Then it tells me the selected comma is in an invalid position, but with no comma highlighted. I've no clue what's going on. What am I missing?

post-14490-1228565775_thumb.jpg

post-14490-1228565787_thumb.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Rod,

 

There's definitely something flaky going on. It appears that there's some limitation on the number of roots you can have listed in the ROOT item. To make this work, I had to create two constructs linked with an OR command. In the first construct, I entered the roots ανα through κατα, and in the second, μετα through υπο. It's a clumsy workaround, but it works.

 

Hope this helps.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 10 years later...

HI: glad that I am not the first person to want to search for compound verbs in Greek. I am reading a book by Dr. Eta Linneman, and she mentions the issue of "complexity" with regards to the synoptic Gospels. She indicates that one of the arguments for Markan priority has been its "more primitive language", based on "few compound verbs", but Dr. Linneman has done some sort of search which does NOT support this. 

 

So.... can I do my own search with Accordance? Do I need to go back to my Bibleworks software? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Based on the preceding discussion but using NA-28 this works :

post-32023-0-79822600-1567452587_thumb.jpg

 

It appears that in NA28 the eis-1 eis-2 confusion is resolved as eis-1 is clearly marked.

 

Thx

D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...