BDAG Flex Search has Unexpected Behavior

[Matthew Fredenburg]

Hello,

 

If I do a search in BDAG 'English Definition' for 'guilt' (without the single quotes) and I select Flex search, I would expect it to find matches for 'guilt' and 'guilty'. Instead, it only finds matches for 'guilt'. If I want to find 'guilty', I have to change my search term to 'guilty' (without the single quotes). Am I misunderstanding something about how Flex search works?

 

Thank you.

 

Accordance 13.3.2

[Fabian]

AFAIK the Flex Search is more for Tense. For example "punish" and "punished" or "be" "was", but not for nomen to adjective or adverb.

Here you have to use the "guilt*". All without the quotes.

[Matthew Fredenburg]

Hi, thanks for the quick reply. In the accordance Help, it states

 

 

There are two types of Words searches: Word and Flex.

A Word search finds the exact word or phrase entered in the Search Entry box.
A Flex search finds all verses containing English grammatical forms, plurals, and singulars of all words rather than exact phrases (unless excluded by quotes). For example, a search for "forgive" would find "forgive," "forgiven," and "forgiving."

When performing a Flex search, anything in quotation marks is treated as an exact search. In this way you can combine a Flex and Word search.

 

 

From that, I would think specifying 'guilt' and Flex would find what I'm looking for. Is the Help text wrong, or is there a different Help text for searching within a resource such as BDAG and specifying a Flex search type?

 

Thank you.

[Fabian]

AFAIK what I have told you is the one they have mentioned in the video about this feature. But maybe I'm wrong. It is a some years ago as I saw that video.

And it works only in "new" English. Elizabethan English or foreign language is not supported. 

 

 

It seems the ....y or .....ly are not supported. But this is not mentioned in the Help Files as supported. Sorry my English grammar is not the best. I don't know why this is not supported. 

Edited May 28, 2022 by Fabian

[jlm]

1 hour ago, Matthew Fredenburg said:

Hi, thanks for the quick reply. In the accordance Help, it states

 

 

There are two types of Words searches: Word and Flex.

A Word search finds the exact word or phrase entered in the Search Entry box.
A Flex search finds all verses containing English grammatical forms, plurals, and singulars of all words rather than exact phrases (unless excluded by quotes). For example, a search for "forgive" would find "forgive," "forgiven," and "forgiving."

When performing a Flex search, anything in quotation marks is treated as an exact search. In this way you can combine a Flex and Word search.

 

 

From that, I would think specifying 'guilt' and Flex would find what I'm looking for. Is the Help text wrong, or is there a different Help text for searching within a resource such as BDAG and specifying a Flex search type?

 

Thank you.

From that help text, I would not expect a search for “guilt” to find “guilty”, because the latter is not a grammatical form of the former, it is a different word. Specifically, it’s an adjective derived from the noun, much as Fabian said. If you want a kind of search that also finds derived words, that would have to be based on something like a Porter stemmer. That would be a nice feature, especially because it would support more than just English, but it’s not what flex search is meant to do.

[mgvh]

I agree that I would have thought that a Flex search would pick up all English cognates.

Especially for a word like "guilt" (which is not a verb with varying forms), just use: *guilt*

[Matthew Fredenburg]

Hi,

 

thanks for the replies and the patience! OK, I believe I see what you're saying now. So, in the case of the example word used in the Help (forgive), it would find 'forgiven', and 'forgiving', but not 'forgiver' or 'forgiveness', right?

 

Thank you.

[Fabian]

5 hours ago, Matthew Fredenburg said:

Hi,

 

thanks for the replies and the patience! OK, I believe I see what you're saying now. So, in the case of the example word used in the Help (forgive), it would find 'forgiven', and 'forgiving', but not 'forgiver' or 'forgiveness', right?

 

Thank you.

Yes, I've tested it yesterday.