drmatt.thomas Posted October 13, 2021 Share Posted October 13, 2021 Hi all, I'm currently teaching a tools-based Hebrew course using Accordance. Some of my students purchased their packages after July 1, 2021, so they have the newer MT-ETCBC-A rather than the BHS-T. A student contacted me today regarding some discrepancies between my answer keys (made using my BHS-T) and what they're seeing in their new Accordance package with the MT-ETCBC-A. It appears that the morphological tagging is treating some things differently, and--if nothing else--I figured there might be others who would benefit from knowing about the differences. Things I've noticed so far: Numbers - BHS-T identifies them as adjectives; MT-ETCBC-A identifies them as nouns Gentilics (Levite, Ephraimite, etc.) - BHS-T: nouns; MT-ETCBC-A: adjectives את - Although the MT-ETCBC-A does identify it as "<object marker>" when it is the direct object marker, it still identifies it as a preposition, which seems potentially confusing waw consecutive perfects - BHS-T: perf . . . consec; MT-ETCBC-A: not sure if this is marked I searched for wcps in BHS-T, then checked the MT-ETCBC-A for the same words. No mention of 'consec' or anything similar. Some have 'copulative', but inconsistently. I don't know if there's a summary of the differences, but that would be greatly helpful. -Matt 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drmatt.thomas Posted October 13, 2021 Author Share Posted October 13, 2021 I should add that I recognize that some of these cases are arguable either way on a grammatical level, but what I'm mainly concerned about is having consistency with my students. Some of them have the BHS-T, while others have the new MT-ETCBC-A. -Matt 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wbryant Posted October 14, 2021 Share Posted October 14, 2021 Matt, I think you have just uncovered the tip off the iceberg in terms of the differences. I have a colleague who has identified other parsing oddities besides the ones you have. I have not been able to search for jussives, apocopated forms, etc. I understand that the ETCBC is a syntactical mark-up, but I can find no documentation which explains which grammatical forms it parses for. I appreciate the extra levels it can offer. But right now, I am having difficulty with it on the morphological/grammatical level. Other than financial reasons, I do not understand why BHS-T is not included in Accordance Collections as well. I think at the very least we should be provided with documentation which identifies the differences between the basic parsing protocols between ETCBC and BHS-T 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jordan S Posted October 14, 2021 Share Posted October 14, 2021 (edited) I agree it would be helpful to have a comprehensive list of the differences in morphological tagging. I will begin compiling that list. *Feel free to message me your observations. Edited October 14, 2021 by Jordan S 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wbryant Posted October 19, 2021 Share Posted October 19, 2021 Jordan, I am glad you are collecting this information. What is needed is a simple document to explain ETCBC and how it differs from traditional or other systems. It would also be helpful if Accordance could provide a basic bibliography to assist uses, especially teachers, in understanding the theory behind ETCBC. I also hope to see some documents on how to use Accordance’s ETCBC module. Here is the reference to an article I have found helpful. Kingham, Cody, and Wido van Peursen. 2018. “The ETCBC Database of the Hebrew Bible”. Journal for Semitics 27 (1):13 pages. https://doi.org/10.25159/1013-8471/2974. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jordan S Posted October 19, 2021 Share Posted October 19, 2021 In the meantime, see here: https://etcbc.github.io/bhsa/references/ and here: https://shebanq.ancient-data.org 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drmatt.thomas Posted October 28, 2021 Author Share Posted October 28, 2021 On 10/13/2021 at 8:06 PM, wbryant said: Matt, I think you have just uncovered the tip off the iceberg in terms of the differences. I have a colleague who has identified other parsing oddities besides the ones you have. I have not been able to search for jussives, apocopated forms, etc. I understand that the ETCBC is a syntactical mark-up, but I can find no documentation which explains which grammatical forms it parses for. I appreciate the extra levels it can offer. But right now, I am having difficulty with it on the morphological/grammatical level. Other than financial reasons, I do not understand why BHS-T is not included in Accordance Collections as well. I think at the very least we should be provided with documentation which identifies the differences between the basic parsing protocols between ETCBC and BHS-T Yes, indeed. I am teaching volitives this week, and not having jussives and cohortatives tagged is causing a bit of scrambling on my part. It does identify imperatives, which is something. I have a couple ideas for workarounds; if any of them pan out, I'll post them here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wbryant Posted October 28, 2021 Share Posted October 28, 2021 I for one would be interested in the workarounds you find or even a report of finding deadends Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drmatt.thomas Posted July 14, 2022 Author Share Posted July 14, 2022 (edited) Just to update the list of differences that I keep finding: Update on wcp/weqatal: They are just marked as 'perfect', so for now I'm telling my students that if a perfect verb has the conjunction to treat it as a wcp. That will miss the 5% or so of waw-prefixed perfects that are just simple perfect verbs with the conjunction, but that's the best I have so far. cohortatives and jussives are just listed as imperfects (imperatives are identified) - @wbryant mentioned this one above demonstratives are identified as Pronoun demonstrative this/these, rather than Adjective GN this/these (this, to me, is no big deal) no gender given in MT-ETCBC-A for singular demonstratives (this puts a damper on exploring some issues with agreement) nouns with pronominal suffixes are listed as absolute, rather than construct (a WELCOME change, there) יֶשׁ/אֵין - were Particle adverbs, now Noun copulative (not sure why, but ok) Fewer verbal stems/binyanim - For example, וַיְמֹ֣תְתֵ֔הוּ in 1 Sam 17.51 given as piel, rather than polel For this one, I ran a search on all verbs in BHS-T and MT-ETCBC & produced a bar graph of the stems (attached) for comparison. I was tipped off to this one by the review at https://accordancebible.com/product/hebrew-masoretic-text-with-etcbc-morphology-wivu-with-syntax/#reviews Most of the other critiques in that review are minor issues that are also replicated in BHS-T and HMT-W4. That's my list for now... Edited July 14, 2022 by drmatt.thomas clarification 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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