Is there a way to search out in the Greek & Hebrew what the first word of a sentence is (i.e., Very, conjunction, etc.)?

[SpiritandFire44]

I would like to create a concordance in Accordance of all the first words of sentences in the Greek, and Hebrew standard texts.  Does anyone know a way to do this?

[darrylmy]

@SpiritandFire44 Yes, here is the search to perform what you're looking for:

 

* <WITHIN 1 Words> [FIELD BEGIN]

 

The search tells Accordance to search for any word that is within one word from the beginning of the field. Then choose the analysis results and sort by frequency or alphabetically.

[Kristin]

Hi @darrylmy
If you don't mind, could you explain what you mean by "begin field"? What is considered a "field"? I had been giving this some thought thinking of trying to base it off of punctuation, but had concluded that wouldn't work.

 

 

[darrylmy]

HI @Kristin, I don't mind at all. In this case the field would be a verse (since that is default). So the argument would find any word that is within one word from the beginning of the verse. However, if you add the scope parameter and change the scope (e.g., to sentence), then that will change the beginning of the field to the chosen scope (each sentence as in the screenshot below). Here is a screenshot just to be sure it's clear:

 

 

Hope that helps!

[Solly]

42 minutes ago, darrylmy said:

 

 

Hope that helps!

I probably saw this feature long ago in a Lighting the Lamp or Webinar video, but I was not actively aware of this feature. This is so much fun to explore! 

 

—Joseph

[SpiritandFire44]

Ok, I have one more question.  This may not be possible, but is there a way that accordance can tell you the word order of every verse?

[Ken Simpson]

13 hours ago, SpiritandFire44 said:

Ok, I have one more question.  This may not be possible, but is there a way that accordance can tell you the word order of every verse?

Hi, do you mean can Accordance spassign an integer numeral tha reflects the order in a verse? 

[SpiritandFire44]

Thanks for responding.  No.  But that could be a solution.  How would I get accordance to do that?

[A. Smith]

Conjunctions in greek are often postpositive (not occurring first) and so you'd need to modify that search a bit. You could also simply search the greek text for [CONJUNCTION] and sort from there. One thing that's important here is that the definition of 'sentence' is extremely vague and not cross-linguistic; ie, what we may call a sentence in English may be several sentences in Greek and/or Hebrew (or vice versa). In fact, it's quite likely that greeks didn't really think in terms of sentences but rather in terms of cola (singular, colon) which, in this sense, are 'breath units'; that is, the segment of cohesive speech one would say in a single breath. This is why, despite what many preachers would like us to believe, Ephesians 1.3-12, is not 'one sentence in the greek' and would never have been conceived of that way by Paul or anyone hearing/reading what he wrote. 

 

What you'd be looking for, in linguistic terms, are independent and subordinate clauses (note that in the [CONJUNCTION] search you can specify either one of these in the 'class' drop-down. Not all subordinate clauses are 'sentences' but most independent clauses are (I'm having a hard time thinking of exceptions off the top of my head). So, for example, I am currently doing a discourse analysis of 1 Timothy and earlier today found that 5.8 can be broken down into 3 independent clauses, two of which have a conjunction (1 and 3):

 

1 εἰ δέ τις τῶν ἰδίων καὶ μάλιστα οἰκείων οὐ  ⸀προνοεῖ,

2 τὴν πίστιν ἤρνηται

3 καὶ ἔστιν ἀπίστου χείρων. 

 

These are often translated as one sentence but in greek can legitimately be construed as 3 sentences (but not wrongly considered as 1 or 2 sentences as well). I bring this up because, if you're looking for sentence initial conjunctions, how would you count the kai of clause 3 here? It's not considered sentence initial by English translations or the NA/USB text. But, it can very reasonably and justifiably be considered sentence initial. Another thing to consider is that the lack of a conjunction (asyndeton) is just as significant as the presence of a conjunction.

 

Sorry if I'm raining on your parade here! But these are some things to think about in your search.

 

[SpiritandFire44]

Not at all it is an excellent discussion!  I am looking to analyze the word order to see if it varies from the "normal" word order, to see for emphatic features and other things related to word order.  Does this sound like a foolish quest?

[mgvh]

Well... to start, you could try something like this in a Greek construct search:

(Note that you need to set depth to 1; you can also run more sophisticated searches adding the object, etc.)

 

I have not checked all the results, but this should be representative:

• 2185 Predicate Subject
• 3551 Subject Predicate

Now this should raise a question for you as you perhaps were taught, as I was, that the "normal" word order in Greek is Verb Subject Object. That is basically correct, but it needs more nuance. You will want to read this recent post by Mike Aubrey on Greek word order.

What I make of my simple search is that while Predicate-Subject is 'normal,' the NT authors very frequently put the subject first in order to emphasize it.

Hope that helps.

 

[A. Smith]

3 hours ago, SpiritandFire44 said:

Not at all it is an excellent discussion!  I am looking to analyze the word order to see if it varies from the "normal" word order, to see for emphatic features and other things related to word order.  Does this sound like a foolish quest?

what is normal (unmarked?) word order? 

[A. Smith]

@SpiritandFire44 if you wanna go down the rabbit hole, I’m happy to go there with you. Greek word order has been a subject of my consternation and investigation for going on a decade now.