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distinguishing different meanings of the same word


Yohanan

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Hello,

 

It is my impression that there is an Accordance video about this, but I am not sure exactly where I can find this.

 

The question is :

 

Is it possible to look for a word distinguishing between its main meanings in order to get a general overview of its use?

 

Some tricky ones would be, I guess, a word like DaVaR in Hebrew of like pistis in Greek.

 

Can anyone direct me to such a video - if there is one ?

 

Thanks for any help.

 

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Hi Yohanan,

If I understand you correctly not as far as I know using greek or Hebrew, but you can do it from a keyed text.

 

So, for example, you can search for every time the word דָּבָר is translated as "word" by finding the key number for דָּבָר (H1697) and attaching the translation to it [KEY H1697]@"word*" (the * will also pick up the plural)

 

post-29509-0-31278100-1411467303_thumb.png post-29509-0-53168100-1411467443_thumb.png

 

Alternatively, if you search just for [KEY H1697] and do a "Word Count Total"=> Analysis then you can ctrl-click (or right click pc) the key number in the analysis pane and it will of the appropriate search for you.

 

post-29509-0-02198000-1411467469_thumb.pngpost-29509-0-79603600-1411467485_thumb.pngpost-29509-0-04401800-1411467514_thumb.png

 

If I haven't quite gotten what you mean, please let me know.

 

If you would rather have a video, I can do that too.

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BTW - podcast 102 looks at Key numbers in some detail, and you may find it helpful. http://www.accordancebible.com/site/resources/multimedia/podcast/?category_id=3318835

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Hi Ken,

 

First of all thank you so much for the quick reply. I watched the podcast about the Keyed text and my first impression from the video is that it is not really possible to distinguish between the main English meanings of an Hebrew or Greek word. This is not a critic of Accordance for this has not been possible with any other tool until now, as far as I know. Except partially between Hebrew and Greek septuagint for wich an old Index and a more recent and readable form of it have been published.

Regarding the search for a Key as you suggest, the video says nothing about where to begin, and I was not able to reach the point where I enter such a Key for research - I looked into the preferences. I am aware that this is due to my inability to think "informatics".

 

All best wishes.

Edited by Yohanan
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Finally I could ask for a keyed number in searching from the NASB95 or ESV on the basis of its translation as 'word', but then I got places where the English keyed version gives 'thing', 'event', etc. as well as 'word'. This appears to be perfectly normal for the Key is meant to relate to the original language. A bit more strange is the fact that I got 1360 hits, which is at odds with a direct search for Hebrew DaVaR in BHS where one gets 1454 hits. This results in some confusion as you can imagine.

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Hi ya

 

Regardng the count mismatches, I suspect you may have multiple things going on here. I checked HMT-W4 not having BHS and it has 1465 occurrenecs of this word in various forms. I assume that is due to textual variation in the originals. Next ESVS, RSVS, NAS95S and KJVS all report different numbers of references to H1697. But I don't know what text each was actually translated from, and it could have been a collection of texts in the case of some translations. In order for everything to match properly I suspect you would need to have the Hebrew text from which the English was made and that text would have to be tagged 100% accurately.

 

As to the questions of mechanics let me see if I can help a little, though the following mostly repeats Ken's and the podcast's information. It depends upon where you start. Assuming that as you are using key numbers that you are starting in English you would find the key number from instant details when you mouseover on an English word, say in this case for example "words" in ESVS Gen 11:1. ID will show you the key and then you can run [KEY H1697] searches against any tagged English text you have. Once you have done that you can open an analysis tab which will give you a table of the translations found. Bear in mind that where a word in English is used to translate multiple Hebrew words it will show all those words. You just have to ignore the ones where the key does not match. Just looking quickly over this list here for the ESVS there is quite some variation. At that point I'd cross check with lexica. Decent lexica will give you a good appreciation of the range of meaning.

 

Regarding word@[key H1697]. That should, when the search is run against an English text, give you just where the word "word" is used in the translation (EXACT search) or variants of "word" such as "words", "worded" etc. (FLEX search). This search combine both the key and the translation you are looking for. Example output from the query against ESVS.

 

Total number of verses = 749
(total number of verses displayed = 749)

word@[key H1697] [Flex] (793 total words)

word = 444
H1697 dabar דָּבָר = 444
words = 349
H1697 dabar דָּבָר = 349

But all the above said, the way I normally try to get the range of meaning of a word in Greek (and would do it more or less similarly in Hebrew) is that I would use a lexicon to get the meanings as documented there. (You can do this even if you start from English by finding the Hebrew word you're interested in and using a a lexicon, or an expository dictionary). Then I would run a search for the Hebrew word in an original language text and then open various English translations in parallel panes and see how the word was handled in those translations. You tend to get more contextual information that way. You can see how the sentence was handled rather than just the word. But you can get an indication using key number searches.

 

So I'm pretty sure you can in fact do what you originally wanted to do, but if this is not what you are after perhaps you could walk through a detailed example highlighting where it goes awry for you.

 

Thx

D

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Thanks Daniel.

 

Regarding the Hebrew text, except for tiny features, it is certainly the same for all the modern translations from the time of the Reformation, so it is the one tagged in Accordance ("100% accurately" as you rightly require, I don't know).

 

Regarding the Podcast it is very narrow and I did not learn a lot, nothing regarding this kind of search.

 

You speak of "An analysis table" and that sounds interesting, coudl you tell where this is to be found in Accordance ? I guess that once I reach this function I can go ahead with the procedure you kindly suggest.

 

Accordance is a rather complex tool. I love it for having old texts in synopsis and for the possibility of looking for grammatical forms independantly of the semantics. But as far as semantics is involved, it does not offer much. Even the use of the dictionnaries could be enhanced in order to get what you are looking for every time you do look for a specific word or form.

 

Thanks a lot for taking generously of your time to help.

Edited by Yohanan
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Acc has numerous features it's true. That Analysis tab is opened by clicking the little graph icon on the top right of the search pane after you have done a search. Clicking there displays a small pull down menu and you can select various options. There are several subsections in the menu. Under the "Word Count Totals" subsections click on Analysis. Oh I found my search workspace is still around.I've attached an image of it and a highlight of the icon I am talking about.

 

post-32023-0-06011600-1411998108_thumb.jpg

 

post-32023-0-42976100-1411998123_thumb.jpg

 

Thx

D

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Thanks again.

 

Due to you help, I make some progress in the analysis.

 

I still wonder what are the figures added to the lexical forms; for example I finally found the references for the demonstrative for ’el instead of ’elleh when I discovered that there was another one proposed with the figure 6- attached to it and not only the one with the figure -0.

 

Blessings.

Edited by Yohanan
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Yohanan, are you simply trying to distinguish between the different homonyms of a word? Accordance uses the _1 marker for each homonym. So, for example, "ברא־1" is a search for the 'to create', while "ברא־2" is for the 'to fatten'. Is this the distinction you are looking for? Note, you must add an equals sign before the word to specify that you want Accordance to exactly match that lemma.

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Hi Joel, thanks for answering (in a very Jewish way, by asking a question :rolleyes: ) I just don't understand what these attached numbers are, let's take the lexical form ’el, you get 5 of them:

 

1) one without any number attached treated as a name: El (name)

2) one with the attached number 0– with the meaning: these (is it the Aramaic occurrence in Ezra?)

3) one with the number 4- attached with the meaning : power

4) then the one with the number 5- attached treated as meaning: God

5) finally the one I was first looking for with the number 6- attached treated as the short form of the pl. demonstrative: these

 

As there are no 1, 2, 3 numbers I first looked at the one with the 0- attached and fell on the Aramaic form in Ezra, this move was because I knew I was looking for the shorter form of the demonstrative plural.

 

All best wishes.

Edited by Yohanan
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Yohanan: I will be happy to give you a personal tour of some of these things which are clearly eluding you, but not today. Please send me a personal message with your contact information.

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Thanks Helen, but I am not so desirous to proceed along this way. I stil think that a User's guide would be most helpful. Just to illustrate: I remember having a wonderful time with one person from Accordance regarding the use of the Atlas maps. As I do not use it often, I have forgotten almost every of the few things I was taught to do. To the rare use one can add the fact that people well acquainted with a program - even unwillfully - are much too fast with their explanations (I cannot blame them for this), as it is the case with almost any electronic/ informatic matter. Moreover staff always have a lot to do.

 

I asked about the figures attached to lexical form, because I thought this should be a rather simple one to answer on the side of the Accordance people. I hope it is.

Right now, I am back on the site because when asking for a parallel to Gen 10, I am directed to 1 Chron 1, as awaited, but cannot run the full comparison because it stops to the eighth verse of Gen 10. Is this a but in th eprogram or is this due to y ignorance of Accordance ?

 

In the meantime I do as I have been taught to do once: open a new search window, then I dragged it on the side of the other text to make a synopsis.

 

Thanks again and blessings.

Edited by Yohanan
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The homographs (as almost everything) is explained in the Help files which are our User's Guide.

 

For example, in

Biblical Research and Analyses > Work with Grammatically Tagged Text > Work with Hebrew Tagged Text > Entering Hebrew Lexical, Inflected, and Root Forms

 

you can find:

Homographs in the Lemma List

The list of lexical forms distinguishes between the vowel forms of each word.

  • Verb lemmas are unpointed.
  • All other lemmas have vowel points.
  • In addition, some lemmas have been numbered with 0_ for Aramaic words, or with 1_, 2_, etc. to distinguish homographs with identical vowel pointing but different meanings. The figure below shows nine forms for the letters אמר, with some with very different meanings.
htt_db_sel-lex-frm.png
In the Old Testament Parallels, if you enter Gen 10 there are 3 pericopes, covering different parts of the chapter. You can select them in the top right area.
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  • 3 weeks later...

Shalom Helen,

 

Thanks a lot for the help. I did not come to the site for I am overloaded with work these weeks.

 

Bi-Vrakha.

 

Yohanan

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