Verbs conjugated? Nouns declined?

[JSGilliom]

Is there any way (in Hebrew or Greek) to select a word from the text and easily see all the forms of the word (whether or not the forms are used in the biblical text)? For example, is it possible to select a verb and easily see the verb fully conjugated? Or is it possible to click on a pronoun, noun, or adjective and see the word fully declined?

 

(I know this flies in the face of conventional wisdom, but I do think being able to do the above would greatly assist me in learning and keeping the paradigms straight in my head.)

 

Thanks,

John S Gilliom

[jpkang]

You can, but I think you'll probably find the results somewhat harder to digest than a well-presented paradigm in a grammar.

 

Here's an example for a Hebrew verb.

 

If you have a form selected, you can simply amplify to the Hebrew Bible using the Resource palette or Amplify menu. Or you can enter the lexical form in which you are interested into the search box, constraining it as necessary (e.g., you could look for only the Qal, Piel, Hiphil, Niphal, etc., of a given root, or just the imperatives, by using the Search > Enter Grammatical Tag menu). Press return or click OK.

 

Now, press the Details button, and click on the Analysis tab. At this point, you won't see any detailed breakdown.

 

Go to Display > Set Analysis Display..., and drag INFLECT and TAG under LEX in column 1. It should look something like this:

 

 

Click OK, and you should now see an alphabetically arranged breakdown by vocalization with parsing (in an example I ran on DBR-2, Piel, to speak, I got 139 lines of data). You could also set the sort to frequency count in the Analysis Display, in order to see the most frequently occurring forms first, for example, if you want to get an idea of frequency or rarity of forms.

 

I should say that while I don't use Accordance often to check these types of comprehensive listings, I have used it frequently in the past to check and see if a given root actually occurs in a given conjugation, since grammars sometimes supply synthetic forms to fill out paradigms.

 

Typo corrected, quote removed, thanks J.P. (Helen)

[JSGilliom]

Thank you much for your help! This gives me much to play with. Looks great.

 

Blessings,

John

 

(Still ... I do wish there were a way to quickly get a "standard" paradigm for any word which included even the non-biblical forms that I could more quickly digest. I think it would be a great feature for learning language ... at least the way I tend to learn ... I think it would speed my learning ...)

[jpkang]

A couple of thoughts:

 

Paradigms are inherently artificial reconstructions, ordinarily attempting to show the most commonly attested forms for ease of learning and reference, but there almost always exceptions to the "rules." Given that the exceptional forms are usually quite rare and not infrequently explained by recourse to the historical grammar of the language, they're much easier to understand (and remember) after one has done this sort of study.

 

I've actually thought about such an "auto-paradigm" feature in the past, but only for generating within the biblical languages, since if I understand your desire for "non-biblical" forms (did you mean "non-standard"?), once you include extrabiblical Greek, you're talking about different dialects, and with extrabiblical Hebrew, you're talking about mostly unpointed Hebrew reflecting over a thousand years' differences in spelling practices. So there are some methodological reasons for keeping them somewhat separate for analysis.

 

At present, the Greek and Hebrew lexicons (e.g. BDAG and KB/HALOT) and possibly the reference grammars go furthest in giving the kind of morphological inventory you're looking for in the most compact fashion. But most people probably would not find a welter of idiosyncratic and questionable forms helpful at the front end of the learning process!

 

The queries you're putting together sound fascinating, so have fun!