Abram K-J Posted June 9, 2014 Share Posted June 9, 2014 I'm reviewing a commentary right now that says the Hebrew text of Obadiah has "291 words," a figure which is based on Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament's statistics. When I do an asterisk search in Obadiah to get its number for words in Accordance (using a Hebrew text), I see "388 hits," which then in the Analytics shows as "388 total words" (with 167 different forms). I know that Accordance is counting prefixes separately, because the word list in Analytics includes prefixed prepositions and the article as separate "words": I also know that Accordance is not counting suffixes, because they appear in black (as opposed to red, in which my hits appear) in my Obadiah text. The count in TLOT is "based on the graphic units" in the Hebrew text ("words separated by spaces or maqqēp"). In other words, unlike Accordance, TLOT counts prefixed prepositions and the article together with the word they precede. Two questions: 1. Is everything above correct? 2. Is there a way to get a word count in Accordance (say, Hebrew Obadiah) such that prefixed prepositions, etc. are not counted as separate words? I.e., to approximate the kind of criteria TLOT uses? Either way, I think I would probably go with Accordance over TLOT on this way of counting "words" in Hebrew, although I would guess that what constitutes a Hebrew "word" has probably served as the content of some dissertation somewhere.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timothy Jenney Posted June 9, 2014 Share Posted June 9, 2014 (edited) Try this. I get 302 words. The count might be a bit different if the lemmas are not specified as "Exact." (=הַ, =בְּ, =וְ, =וְ־0, =לְ, =לְ־0=)- @*= Edited June 9, 2014 by Timothy Jenney Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Graham Buck Posted June 9, 2014 Share Posted June 9, 2014 (edited) Was geeking out for a minute, trying to find some articles on this topic. Nothing directly related, but I though you all might enjoy following up on some of these: An HMM approach to vowel restoration in Arabic and Hebrew - http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1118641 The symmetry of the Hebrew bible - http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00393389208600120?journalCode=sthe20 [this one looks interesting and might have some data that's worthwhile] And as a bonus, has it really come to this?: Wordplay in church marquees - http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/humr.2011.24.issue-2/humr.2011.012/humr.2011.012.xml Edited June 9, 2014 by Graham Buck Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Abram K-J Posted June 9, 2014 Author Share Posted June 9, 2014 "Our comparison of the puns found on church billboards versus those found in a general corpus of puns reveals significant differences in structure and content, suggesting that these puns represent a specific type of humor." I want this "general corpus of puns" as an Accordance Tool. Tim--thank you, and good idea. I'll try a similar search string. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anon Posted June 9, 2014 Share Posted June 9, 2014 (edited) -- Edited May 12, 2015 by ------------- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anon Posted June 9, 2014 Share Posted June 9, 2014 (edited) -- Edited May 12, 2015 by ------------- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Abram K-J Posted June 10, 2014 Author Share Posted June 10, 2014 Thanks, James--this is helpful. So I think it's clear that Accordance includes (in its understanding of a Hebrew "word") prefixed prepositions, etc. Is one understanding of what constitutes a Hebrew "word" more common than the other? (Perhaps there is already potential imprecision introduced when using the word "word.") Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anon Posted June 10, 2014 Share Posted June 10, 2014 (edited) -- Edited May 12, 2015 by ------------- 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Abram K-J Posted June 10, 2014 Author Share Posted June 10, 2014 Nice search there, James--thanks again. Agreed that it would be nice for Accordance to somehow let the researcher define "word," depending on what they are trying to do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Graham Buck Posted June 10, 2014 Share Posted June 10, 2014 You know, guys, that sounds like a fantastic "Feature Request"… 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anon Posted June 10, 2014 Share Posted June 10, 2014 (edited) -- Edited May 12, 2015 by ------------- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Graham Buck Posted June 10, 2014 Share Posted June 10, 2014 Two separate posts to the Request forum and you're well on your way to simplified research goodness. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Abram K-J Posted June 10, 2014 Author Share Posted June 10, 2014 Okay--I'll just link to this post and put in the request for user options to select how Hebrew words are counted. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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