Possibly incorrect UBS5/NA28 tagging of παρεπίδημος

[Lawrence]

The word παρεπίδημος appears 3 times (in various declensions) in UBS5 and NA28 - Hebrews 11:13, 1 Peter 1:1, 1 Peter 2:11.

In all 3 cases, Accordance tags it as a noun (see screenshot below). This is the case whether I mouse-over the word in UBS5 or NA28.

The BDAG lexical entry is "παρεπίδημος, ον", which looks like a lexical entry for an adjective (the lexical entries for nouns usually include the article).

The other major Bible software platform also tags all 3 UBS5 instances as "noun" (I didn't check NA28 there).

 

It might be that Accordance has tagged the word incorrectly in both UBS5 and NA28.

 

[Lawrence]

There's a similar situation with κακοποιός (1 Peter 2:12, 2:14, 4:15). It looks like an adjective in BDAG but is tagged as a noun in UBS5.

Even if it is used as a nominative in the context, the mouse-over lexical tagging should preserve the word's grammatical part-of-speech.

[Steven S]

1 hour ago, Lawrence said:

The BDAG lexical entry is "παρεπίδημος, ον", which looks like a lexical entry for an adjective (the lexical entries for nouns usually include the article).

 

Indeed. Mounce's Analytical Lexicon to the Greek New Testament classifies παρεπίδημος as a–3a. And in his Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words, he adds, "While parepidēmos is, strictly speaking, an adjective, in the NT it is used as a noun ..." Maybe that exclusive usage as a substantive is what led to the tagging confusion?

[Dr. Nathan Parker]

Thanks. Make sure these also go to Report Corrections. 

[Lawrence]

On 12/24/2024 at 6:07 AM, Dr. Nathan Parker said:

Thanks. Make sure these also go to Report Corrections. 

 

You're welcome.

The email process that Accordance's normal reporting invokes is a bit cumbersome, so I'm reporting it here so that it can go to the corrections department.

I'm sure others have pointed the simple & direct corrections process used by Accordance's major competitor, but theirs really is a more user-friendly method than having to ensure that my email is set up in an Accordance-compliant way on every device I use Accordance on.

[Kristin]

2 hours ago, Lawrence said:

I'm sure others have pointed the simple & direct corrections process used by Accordance's major competitor

 

Hi @Lawrence,

Just out of curiosity, how does it work over at L to report a correction?  I have never found Accordance's correction reporting to be a commotion, as when I click to report a correction, it auto-populates an email. That is how it works with MacMail anyway. Does Accordance auto-populate an email for you on Windows?

 

Merry Christmas

[ukfraser]

I agree with Kristin. I also don't find reporting corrections to be a problem. I just highlight the text, click on report correction in the sub menu that magically appears and then send and reference, text and email address are all automatically populated and I get a single response that its been received.
 

When I find one correction, i then typically find a whole bunch so i send those individually as I read, but dont get a further notification. 
 

I am just hoping to see the promised updates with corrections in starting to appear soon.

Edited December 25, 2024 by ukfraser

[Lawrence]

@Kristin @ukfraser

In L, you right-click the word (or the selected text), click 'Report typo', enter the details and hit Submit. It's all in-app and you're back to whatever you were doing.

 

That's not the case with Accordance.

I've ended up with several obsolete notebooks over the years - not new, but they run Accordance well. I can leave one at home, another at the office and so on.

I don't need email installed on every machine, and Accordance shouldn't care whether I do or not.

But if Accordance can't find my email app, it can be a bit of a run-around to submit typos.

 

I don't mind not getting typo-report receipt notifications - I'd rather fire off a typo report quickly and get back to the text.

 

PS: Merry Christmas!

[ukfraser]

23 minutes ago, Lawrence said:

@Kristin @ukfraser

In L, you right-click the word (or the selected text), click 'Report typo', enter the details and hit Submit. It's all in-app and you're back to whatever you were doing.

Ahh, that makes sense. I tend to use on my ipad or mbp which has email. Not tried to report from phone which doesnt have email.

 

im guessing this will go into the accordance brain storm for some future cloudy sky or choppy water release.

 

and a happy new year to you!

 

;o) 

Edited December 26, 2024 by ukfraser

[Dr. Nathan Parker]

We are brainstorming ways to streamline and improve Report Corrections in the future, but nothing official to announce yet. In the meantime, someone will want to email this in. 

[Ken Simpson]

It's interesting (sorry, not on the report corrections issue). Mounce classifies this παρεπίδημος as a noun though says it is "strictly speaking, an adjective". So I don't think the parsing is errant, but probably functional. Obviously in the NT examples, παρεπίδημος is not taking the standard [article+agreeing adjective] form of substantive, but in the three examples of its use it seems to be used substantivally in the NT. So, I guess you could say that morphologically it is an adjective but functionally it is substantive/noun. That's why I guess Dr Mounce says what he says.

 

 

New Testament

Noun: παρεπίδημος (parepidēmos), GK G4215 (S G3927), 3x. While parepidēmos is, strictly speaking, an adjective, in the NT it is used as a noun meaning “stranger” or “alien.” See strange(r).

 

Mounce’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words. Accordance electronic edition, version 1.5. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006.

 

[Mike Atnip]

41 minutes ago, Ken Simpson said:

It's interesting (sorry, not on the report corrections issue). Mounce classifies this παρεπίδημος as a noun though says it is "strictly speaking, an adjective". So I don't think the parsing is errant, but probably functional. Obviously in the NT examples, παρεπίδημος is not taking the standard [article+agreeing adjective] form of substantive, but in the three examples of its use it seems to be used substantivally in the NT. So, I guess you could say that morphologically it is an adjective but functionally it is substantive/noun. That's why I guess Dr Mounce says what he says.

 

 

New Testament

Noun: παρεπίδημος (parepidēmos), GK G4215 (S G3927), 3x. While parepidēmos is, strictly speaking, an adjective, in the NT it is used as a noun meaning “stranger” or “alien.” See strange(r).

 

Mounce’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words. Accordance electronic edition, version 1.5. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006.

 

From my less-than-perfect understanding, the line between a noun and an adjective is not really a line, but a murky grey area.

[Lawrence]

@Mike Atnip

 

I had wondered whether it was something like that, especially since all 3 instances in the NT appear as substantives.

Calling it a substantive would have been fine, but for Accordance to list the lexeme as a noun seems a smidgen out of line.

Nevertheless, I'm very happy to see the Mounce quote you found - thank you.

[Ken Simpson]

18 hours ago, Mike Atnip said:

From my less-than-perfect understanding, the line between a noun and an adjective is not really a line, but a murky grey area.

Yes, even in English we can see that, where nouns and adjectives seem to swap roles constantly. Nouns in apposition are nouns acting as adjectives, anytime we use an adjective substantially it is acting as a noun, and adjectives can be predicative because they act as nouns. Even morphologocally in Greek, there is almost nothing to distinguish them, and the fact that the lexica list nouns with articles (generally) and adjectives without, is sometimes their judgement (guess) about whether it is noun or adjective. 
 

Anyway, a subject for us lexical pedants to get all in a fuss and bother about, but of almost no functional significance as far as I am aware. Always happy to be corrected and learn!

[Mike Atnip]

16 hours ago, Ken Simpson said:

Always happy to be corrected and learn!

If you thought that I was "correcting" you, I wasn't. I was glad you wrote what you did, and my comment was just an idiomatic way of giving a perspective of why there may be differences in tagging.

[Ken Simpson]

20 hours ago, Mike Atnip said:

If you thought that I was "correcting" you, I wasn't. I was glad you wrote what you did, and my comment was just an idiomatic way of giving a perspective of why there may be differences in tagging.

No, not at all Mike. Just reflecting that you never know everything, and to have a heart that is willing to learn is so important. I wasn't responding to your comment at all! It seemed very perspicuous! (and funny!)

[A. Smith]

It's quite true that the line between adjectives and nominals is blurry. In both Greek and English the morphology of adjectives and nouns is essentially identical, except that in greek an adjective can assume more than one gender and nouns generally (but not always) do not. παρεπίδημος is typically an adjective. But there are various ways to define adjectives, either morphologically or syntactically). The uses of παρεπίδημος in 1 Peter is particularly troublesome because in 2.11 this word functions syntactically as a noun (substantive) and so can reasonably be declined and labeled as a noun. This, then, cause trouble for the case of 1 Peter 1.1 where we have the dative phrase ἐκλεκτοῖς παρεπιδήμοις in reference to the letter's recipients. Syntactically, one of these words is functioning as the noun and the other as an adjective. But which is which? Some argue that the use of παρεπίδημος in 2.11 suggests the word in 1.1 should be nominal while ἐκλεκτοῖς should be the adjective. This is a very reasonable and grammatically sound (though not absolutely sure) argument and Accordance has also taken this approach. In Hebrews 11.13, both ξένοι and παρεπίδημοί are complements/objects in a predicate nominative construction, where the explicit subject is omitted (but present in the verb morphology), εἰσιν. So it is quite right for παρεπίδημοί to be tagged as a noun in this case. 

 

All of this shows that parsing greek (or Hebrew) morphology is not always cut and dry and there is sometimes good reason for legitimate scholars to disagree about the semantics of a word's morphology. 

 

 

Edited January 8 by A. Smith
spelling

[A. Smith]

2 minutes ago, A. Smith said:

It's quite true that the line between adjectives and nominals is blurry. In both Greek and English the morphology of adjectives and nouns is essentially identical, except that in greek an adjective can assume more than one gender and nouns generally (but not always) do not. παρεπίδημος is typically an adjective. But there are various ways to define adjectives, either morphologically or syntactically). The uses of παρεπίδημος in 1 Peter is particularly troublesome because in 2.11 this word functions syntactically as a noun (substantive) and so can reasonably be declined and labeled as a noun. This, then, cause trouble for the case of 1 Peter 1.1 where we have the dative phrase ἐκλεκτοῖς παρεπιδήμοις in reference to the letter's recipients. Syntactically, one of these words is functioning as the noun and the other as an adjective. But which is which? Some argue that the use of παρεπίδημος in 2.11 suggests the word in 1.1 should be nominal while ἐκλεκτοῖς should be the adjective. This is a very reasonable and grammatically sound (though not absolutely sure) argument and Accordance has also taken this approach. In Hebrews 11.13, both ξένοι and παρεπίδημοί are complements/objects in a predicate nominative construction, where the explicit subject is omitted (but present in the verb morphology), εἰσιν. So it is quite right for παρεπίδημοί to be tagged as a noun in this case. 

 

All of this shows that parsing greek (or Hebrew) morphology is not always cut and dry and there is sometimes good reason for legitimate scholars to disagree about the semantics of a word's morphology. 

 

 

 

I should also say that cases like 1 Peter 2.11 and 1.1 should remind us that the grammatical and syntactical categories we use are a metalanguage not used, and certainly not thought about, during natural speech production by native speakers. No greek speaker would give a moments thought to whether ἐκλεκτοῖς or παρεπιδήμοις was functioning nominally or adjectivally. Nor what case they are in or which category of dative is being used. It's just the way you say the word in this kind of context. It's just what you do. That's how natural speech by native speakers works.