Word Study question

[Kristin]

Ever since it was announced, I have been trying to figure out the "Word Study" and as of today, I think I have it figured out. The issue is not that the Word Study is a way to learn in depth information about a word, but rather, it is a way to get a quick synopsis of a word.

 

For example, if I need to do an in depth study of a word, I would open the analytics and see the word count, open text compare and see how other versions translate it, open dictionaries, and do Research etc.

 

For those of you who like the Word Study feature, the advantage you see is that you get  a quick view of a word. Then if after doing so you want to see more dictionaries, commentaries, etc, you would close the Word Study and do normal Research. Is this correct?

 

I would appreciate any thoughts anyone has.

 

Kristin

[mgvh]

There are different uses depending on whether you are starting with an original language (Greek/Hebrew) or with a translation (English/German...).

 

For Greek in the NT, yes, it does provide a one click jump on a word study with a word count, lexicon link, Frequency Chart (= Analysis Graph), and links to other resources (particularly lexicons and grammars) which one would otherwise have to do with the Research tool.

Initially... the Text Compare and Word Pie Graph are not very useful, since you are starting out with just the one word.

BUT... the Text Compare is very helpful once you start adding English translations so that you can what words are used to translate that Greek word. The Word Pie Graph visualizes those results. This give a quick survey of the range of a word's meaning. Without this tool, one would need to use the TEXT command to find all those words and run it separately for every English version.

NOTE: Results are going to be a little 'messy,' because there is no way to perfectly align the Greek with the English, especially when dealing with prefixes to a lexeme that get translated with prepositions in English or when trying to translate participles...

 

There is further benefit when studying Hebrew or LXX Greek. With the Hebrew, you can choose LXX Rahlfs with Text Compare to see the Greek words used to translate the Hebrew. Starting with Greek, you can see what Hebrew words the Greek is translating.

NOTE: Results are going to be a little 'messy,' because there is no way to perfectly align a Hebrew word (with suffixes and prefixes) to a single Greek word. The obverse is true as well.

[mgvh]

As for doing a Word Study on an English word:

Using the Key Number, the Text Compare is a great way to compare how different English versions translate a word. It also provides a quick survey of the range of a word's meaning.

Using the Word as the basis, the Text Compare can be even more interesting, because it can show you all the Greek and Hebrew words that have been used in a particular version to render that word.

For both of these, it's like using the Louw-Nida Lexicon to examine the range of word's or concepts meaning.

[mgvh]

The tool is even more powerful (though there are some limitations) once you start adding wildcards.

E.g., in Greek, you can modify the command line in the Word Study tab to: +βαινω.

This will give you all the compound forms (like you would do with a Root search, but you have all the words and glosses right to hand, plus you can add English versions to see how the words are translated.

For English words, try something like: help*

This will expand the range of results.

NOTE: You may sometimes get an error that there are too many words to display. We'll see if this limit might be removed in the future.

 

ALSO... note that, depending on your resources, you can use the Text Compare to quickly check out how a word is used in extra-biblical texts like the Apostolic Fathers, Josephus, or Philo.

[John Fidel]

In addition to Mark's excellent overview, the WS is interactive, so clicking on the report findings runs the correct type of search for you. This is really useful where a Text search is necessary to get the results.

 

Regarding his comments about being "messy", some of that is due to which word is tagged in the English texts. Additionally, due to different tagging systems, NASB, Strongs, NIV, the results can sometimes be.... messy.

 

[Michel Gilbert]

All excellent points, Mark and John.

For me, Text Compare is invaluable because it helps to bridge the gap between Hebrew research and English writing. The feature quickly shows me which English translations/glosses readers are familiar with, and these are the words that I lead with, and in some cases, limit myself to.

[John Fidel]

Here is an example of "messy". The LSB and NASB numbering use letters occasionally that make comparisons incorrect.

[Mike Garrity]

 

Thank you Mark for the excellent summary, a couple of minor additions:

 

18 hours ago, mgvh said:

For English words, try something like: help*

This will expand the range of results.

On English words (I know that this is sort of buried in the release notes and we are wrapping up "New in 14" help documentation):

• Any English Text module can now support Flex searching of the word in the Word Study tab. To turn Flex searching on, simply add a “+” in front of the English word.
• When hyper-texting to the Word Study tab from an English Bible that has no Key number tagging, the “+” will be automatically added to the word in the Word Study

 

18 hours ago, mgvh said:

For Greek in the NT,

{...}

Initially... the Text Compare and Word Pie Graph are not very useful, since you are starting out with just the one word.

 

We hope to improve this in a future revision, but we did start to implement one of your/others beta suggestions:

• New Word Study options:
  •  Specify the “Word Class” for Greek and Hebrew Tagged Text Comparisons/Graphs. For now, the options are Lexical (default) and Inflected.