Hebrew 3ms suffix written with ה

[Niek]

I want to find all 3 masc. sing. suffixes in the Hebrew Bible that are written with heh. How can I search for this?

 

Thanks,

 

Niek

 

[Ken Simpson]

Hi Niek. I am pretty sure this search does what you want...

 

 

 

[Ken Simpson]

So I thought I should explain what the search means, so that people can understand the logic that Accordance uses.

 

first - the search for the 3MS suffixes is pretty clear - best way to do that is to use the dropdown menus (Search => enter tag => suffix) and then select 3rd person, masculine, singular on the sheet that appears.

 

then comes the @ symbol which then in effect says - ok - take the results of the first part, and make sure that the hits fulfil these criteria

 

“*ה*=“ means I want a lemma that contains a heh, but can have anything either side of it (remember it is ONLY looking at the suffixes returned as hits as lemmas) and that it must also have the letter heh in it.

 

Turns out it works without the = sign, which makes sense, since the lemma and the literal form will be the same in the suffixes.

Edited July 28, 2015 by Ken Simpson

[Niek]

Thank you very much for your explanation Ken! I was looking for suffixes with only ה and solved it by leaving out the final star. One question though, what is the function of the quotation marks compared to the = sign? And why does the search not work with the = sign only?

 

Thanks

[Ken Simpson]

OK, this is a little complex. I find this part of the search syntax in the accordance cmd line the most difficult to remember...

 

= forces an exact lemma search, whatever the inflection may be. In order to do that, sometimes it will need accents (or in Hebrew, vowels or lemma markers ~1 or ~2 etc).

 

“ “ forces an exact letter search - what we call a literal search, so accordance looks for the string (which is a complete word, or wildcard expression). This will not search across word boundaries. (yes I know the idea of word is somewhat fraught in Hebrew circles).

 

If you analyse your search for the suffixes (Analysis => Word Count Totals => Analysis) you will find this as the result

 

[sUFFIX third masculine singular] @'*ה" (217 total words)

 

(No lexical form) = 217

 

The important piece to see is that the suffixes have no lexical form, (i.e. broadly, no entry in a standard lexicon) and so searching for an exact lemma will fail because there is no lemma!

 

Whereas searching in the “ “ will look for that string of letters.

 

I must admit I am not sure why doing the search @'=*ה” does work though. Somebody cleverer than me will be able to tell us.

 

 

The help pages on these items may be of use to you - you will find them here (If the link doesn’t work, open the help and navigate to Biblical Research and Analyses > Search Criteria > Searches Using Symbols

Edited July 28, 2015 by Ken Simpson

[Ken Simpson]

Just as an addendum, this is how I would do your search (the one you described that only has the * before the heh) using a construct search - very easy this way.

 

Edited July 29, 2015 by Ken Simpson