Greek Construct search NOT issue

[mgvh]

I am looking for Hortatory Subjunctive constructions in the Greek, and trying to do so using a Construct search.

There is more involved than what I show here, but it simplifies things to show my problem.

I am looking for 1st person plural subjunctives. That's easy.

But, I want to eliminate instances where it is used in a question (since those are not hortatory subjunctives). So, in the construct, I add the CHARacter element and put in a Greek question mark, i.e., the semicolon.

Running the construct shown, the first result is Mat 6.31. "What should we eat? or What should ..."

It found the subjunctive, but it somehow does not see the question mark to void this result.

 

If I run the same search but require the question mark, it correctly finds Mat 6.31. I.e., the syntax does know that the question mark is there.

Changing depth doesn't affect results.

 

Anyone figure out why I am getting bad results? Thanks!

 

[Andrew Patterson]

I honestly don't get the construct searches, so I just type it out. I did the following search and got 21 results, which is suspiciously low, but there are no Greek question marks.

 

[VERB first plural subjunctive] <NOT> ?

[Andrew Patterson]

I know that "?" is a wildcard and this search shouldn't work, but I'm experimenting.

[darrylmy]

@mgvh I could not get this to work with a construct search (not sure why, perhaps a bug?), a command line search seems to get the results you're after (at least, it omits the hits in your example):

 

 

@Andrew Patterson was close, but the '?' is a wildcard character as he mentioned (rather than semantic, i.e., signifying a question). But a period signifies a search for the character placed after it (but for some reason the char command in the construct isn't working [in 13.3.3]). 

[mgvh]

Thanks @darrylmy. Yeah, I ended up w/ a command line search to get all the hortatory subjunctives.

 

(*@[verb subjunctive first plural]) <AND><NOT> <PRECEDED BY> <WITHIN 5 Words> ("ου μη" <OR> (ἄχρι, εαν, εανπερ, ει, τις, ινα, εως, οταν, μεχρι, μηποτε))  <AND> <NOT> <FOLLOWED BY> .;

 

That extra stuff gets rid of other subjunctive clause types.

Still, it seems that using a good construct search would get more accurate results.

 

Edited March 15, 2023 by mgvh

[darrylmy]

I agree, I think your search may have revealed a bug with the 'CHAR' item in the construct search. The following construct search seems (to me) to be equivalent with your command line search:

[mgvh]

So odd...

I'll focus on Mat 6.3 for a moment which has the string of subjunctive questions with τί: τί φάγωμεν; ἤ· τί πίωμεν; ἤ· τί περιβαλώμεθα;

This search will find this and other examples (14 hits: Matt 6.31; Luke 3.10, 12, 14; John 6.28; Acts 2.37; 4.16; Rom 8.26 are all valid though I have no idea what the 14 hits is actually counting; problem for another day...):

This search finds many more hits as expected, BUT it incorrectly finds Matt 6.31; Luke 3.10, 14; John 6.28; Acts 2.37; 4.16 from the previous search.

 

I'll attach a file where I try to figure this all out, run searches with question character... I cannot figure out what's happening.

The syntax trees look accurate in the diagramming, so:

• Is there something going on with the τί that the search is not seeing? (They are all properly analyzed in NA28)
• Is there something going on with the Greek question mark that either is missing in the syntax data or is being overlooked in the search routine?

 

 

 

Accordance construct searches with questions.docx

[Dr. Nathan Parker]

I’ll continue to monitor this thread. If someone finds a reproducible bug, let me know, and I’ll report it.