Search perplexity: linking a tagged Gk text with an Eng transl.

[Rod Decker]

This might have been answered elsewhere on the forum, or perhaps it's in the documentation somewhere, but I can't figure out how to identify such listings.

 

I'd like to be able to search for a particular tagged Greek form that contains a specific word in an English translation. Is that possible?

 

E.g., find all participles (ideally anarthrous ones) that include the word "if" in an English translation. (That would provide a list of possible adverbial conditional participles.)

[Helen Brown]

There is no direct way to do this. The closest is to search a Key number text such as NRSVS for the word@[KEY G...]. Then search the tagged text for [CONTENTS NRSVS] your specific form. You can then weed out any false positives.

[Rod Decker]

I was hoping that was not the case. It might work with more distinctive words, but with an "if" there will be a lot of false positives. Since there is the ability with appropriate text modules to see cross-hi-lighting of equivalent forms, it ought to be possible to design relevant cross-module searches like this. It would certainly be worth adding to the list of potential features.

[Jordan S]

Rod,

I felt like playing around with what you were trying to do. Humor me and see if this is what you are looking for. Using the ESVS, I came up with a list of 25 verses that contain participial phrases which contain the English word "if."

 

Matt 5:40; 21:22; Luke 9:25; 14:32; John 18:30; Acts 15:29; 18:21; Rom 7:3; 1 Cor 5:3; 8:10; 11:5; Gal 6:9; 1 Tim 3:10; 4:4, 6; 6:8; Heb 2:3; 6:8; 10:26; 12:25; James 1:26; 1 Pet 3:6; 2 Pet 1:8, 10; Rev 20:15

 

This is probably way out of my league, but I thought it would be a fun challenge.

[Ken Simpson]

Hi Jordan, it would be really intersting to see the search you used to do this. That would help us evaluate the search better

[Jordan S]

My Greek is not as seasoned as yours (I am still in seminary), so I looked up "conditional dependent verbal participles" in Wallace's grammar (p. 632) to get an idea about what was meant. I noticed that in his examples there was not a Greek word for "if".

So, I searched:

1) The ESVS: if @ -[KEY*]

This gave me 107 hits where "if" was not connected to a Greek word, and must be a part of the English translation.

2) I added the GNT-T and copied all of the Greek verses to a reference list.

3) I created a new search using the GNT-T: [verb participle] <and> [CONTENTS ref list]

This gave me 50 verses.

4) I thought that was suitable enough to read through and weed out the false positives. I couldn't think of a way to filter it down any more, and it only took a few minutes using the interlinear to spot the bad ones.

 

*Wallace gives other examples of these conditional participles, but the ones I have listed above are specific to the "if" request.

 

I am afraid I am way off, since there are like 6000 participles.

Edited August 11, 2012 by Jordan S