Question in Regards to Searching for Substantival Adjectives

[Johannian]

Hello there! I’m a third-year student of the Koine Greek language, and I thought it would be helpful if Accordance could search for all instances of substantival adjectives in the Greek NT (and it would be great if it could also search and identify attributives as well as predicates). The module I’m using is the Greek NT (Tagged). I did some searching on my own to see if Accordance has that capability, but it looks like I have to bother you guys for the answer. I’d be most obliged if you could tell me whether or not Accordance has this particular capability.

 

In addition to this, I was wondering if Accordance was able to give me all instances in the Greek NT of adjectives which agree with the noun they modify in a certain case and/or gender and/or number. Of course, I realize this would be a very impressive feature, but with how powerful Accordance is, I didn’t rule it out.

 

Thanks!

Edited January 10 by Johannian

[mgvh]

Hmm... those are kind of complicated requests considering how Greek works and how you would go about trying to find such things.

First, you do need the Greek Syntax module.

Let me go to you second question. By definition, an adjective has to agree in gender, number, and case with the noun. (But not just nouns, any substantive: substantive participles, substantive participle phrases...) You can find most of these with a construct search like this and enabling search in both directions:

You might still have to play around with the depth and the WITHIN range to expand or contract your results. The results will include adjectives in either predicate or attributive position, predicate adjectives, and perhaps some substantival adjectives. (I would have to add things like participles and substantival infinitive clauses under the noun column to pick up more results.)

Now you can try to sort things out further by adding such things as requiring an article or not (to help define position), but you still will have some anomalies. (E.g., πας which has unique characteristics.)

So with the search above, I get 3981 results, but that is counting both the adjectives and the nouns they go with. Among all those, however, are the substantive adjectives you are looking for. I'm not sure there is any easy or precise way to find those substantives given the way the syntax structures work. You could try negating the AGREE box, and that will probably get most of the substantive adjectives, but you will have very many false hits.

Maybe someone else has some ideas on doing the right search.

[Johannian]

Thanks so much for your reply, it was very helpful. Also, thanks for clearing that up about adjectives...the reason I asked that question was due to an instance in Rom. 13:3 in which I thought an adjective was agreeing with a noun (ἐξουσίαν) in number and gender, but not case. A year and a half ago I worked through Bill Mounce's Basics of Biblical Greek, and I thought I recalled him saying that it was a rare occurrence to find an adjective agreeing with a noun in only two aspects, so I thought I had found one of these rare instances. Thanks for clearing that up!

[Johannian]

Hey @mgvh, I experimented with construct search, and I'm blown away with how powerful it is. I'm still relatively new to Accordance and only recently did I decide to learn more about the program, and I'm glad I decided to do so. This will help me immensely in my Greek studies. Thanks so much for letting me know about it.

Edited January 11 by Johannian