13 replies to this topic

[Susan]

Apologies for being a novice with the syntax searches. I'm attempting to find constructions with a noun modified by a relative clause consisting of a cognate participle (at least that's what I think this is...)*, e.g. Gen 7:21 (et al.): haššereṣ haššōrēṣ.

 

If I search without syntax specifiers (using [[noun (abs) + participle], agreement by root, within two words] - screenshot below) I find many that I want but also retrieve some cognate accusatives that happen to occur with participles (e.g. Gen 1:11 zrʿ, Hab 1:5 pʿl, Gen 27:33 ṣwd, Deut 18:13 zbḥ), as well as others of varying relationships other than what I want, and I may be missing some of those I'm interested in that have additional intervening words. I'm wondering if I can use syntax to create a better search. 

 

I tried applying to the participle an adjunct dependent clause term (screenshot below) but that didn't find the Gen 7:21-like constructions. (Others I think are what I'm looking for include, e.g.: Gen 1:26 rmś, Lev 16:29 gr, Jer 8:3 šʾr, Jer 23:6 nbʾ.) When I attempt to do anything to adjust this (I think the participle is really a complement within the adjunct dependent clause, so perhaps it should be somehow marked this way), Accordance (11.1.0; OS X 10.10) consistently, repeatedly, crashes. 

 

(If anybody has any references about this construction (noun + cognate participle as modifier) independent of Accordance, I would welcome that as well.)

 

 

Thanks for your help.

 

----

*Seems like it may also be possible to analyze it as an attributive participle sans relative clause, but from what I can figure out this is not how the syntax diagrams have it.

 

 no_syntax.jpg   34.4KB   1 downloads  with_syntax.jpg   43.19KB   1 downloads

Edited by Susan, 08 November 2015 - 11:08 PM.

[Robert Holmstedt]

I can't address the crashing, and am not on my Mac to try the search, but I can comment in the last question. In brief, what grammarians called the attributive participle is only superficially like an attributive adjective. The difference is, of course, that the participle is not an adjective and encodes an activity/event. As such, all participles have the structure of a predication, regardless whether they do so in the main clause or in a subordinate (I.e., relative) clause modifying a noun.

[Robert Holmstedt]

Ok, here is a better proximity search, I think:

 Screen Shot 2015-11-09 at 7.54.19 AM.png   55.62KB   1 downloads

 

And here is a workable syntax search:

 Screen Shot 2015-11-09 at 8.10.28 AM.png   53.19KB   2 downloads

 

The syntax search is interesting in that it also gives full relative clause (with participle) results, showing the parallel between the two constructions.

[Susan]

Thank you very much for your help, Dr. Holmstedt. I will take a look through these results.

 

I see that you added the article in the proximity search, which helps eliminate some irrelevant results. Was that just for expediency, or is it an essential part of the construction in your view? I was resisting adding it under the influence of Waltke/O’Connor, but I would defer to you. (It looks like there are a few in the syntax results without the article or another relative marker - I’m looking at Ex 33:10, Num 5:15 - but maybe there is something different going on there.)

[Robert Holmstedt]

It was merely practical. Not all participial relatives have the ה-relative marker, but most do. WOC's presentation is solid, but slightly inaccurate on the participial relatives. Close but not quite. I discuss these devils in the intro to my Baylor Ruth handbook as well as the Ency. of Heb. Lang. and Ling. entry on relative clauses (posted on my blog).

 

For the search you want, the challenge is searching for a syntactic construction that begins with a noun (a lexical category). As we're are doing, it is possible to mix and match the lexical, morphological, and syntactic search tags, but the typical result list includes more than what is really wanted. The issue is that the mixing-and-matching by its nature casts a broader net than an exclusively syntactic search.

 

These are great questions. Thanks for putting this on the forum. Every time, it allows us to refine our use (and sometimes programming) of the syntax searching.

[Susan]

Is it possible to specify that the participle complement needs to be in a dependent clause, or even in a clause that is dependent on the clause with the noun? I ask because I’m still getting a fair number of cognate accusatives. These are minimized if I only search one direction, with the noun first, and I doubt I lose many of the participial relatives that way (?). I’m mostly asking for the sake of learning how to construct syntax searches in general.

 

The search in the image below (one direction) adding a dependent clause term seems to be reasonably good (though I’m curious if you see a disadvantage over the one above - I haven’t crossed them to see if I'm missing some), but because the participle isn’t necessarily a level below the noun, I still find things like Hab 1:5 (I think also Ezra 5:4, though I don’t know Aramaic),  a cognate accusative where both happen to be couched in a dependent clause.

 

Again I really appreciate your time.

 

 dependent.jpg   24.83KB   1 downloads

Edited by Susan, 10 November 2015 - 06:37 AM.

[Robert Holmstedt]

Now this is interesting, because I haven't really used the new "depth" feature in the syntax. First, your search is very good, but I added one feature -- I made the initial noun "absolute" in order to exclude any bound constructions. Second, it doesn't work with 0 or 1 in the depth levels, which is correct! The participle in the relative is two levels down from the noun it modifies (first level is that it's in a subordinate clause, second level is that it's the complement within the predicate phrase). This is great news. Kudos to Roy Brown for adding the depth box.

 

By the way, I chuckled when the search brought up Esth 8:8, since it shows the close structure between participial relatives (with or without the relative ה) and אשׁר relatives with participles. The only difference is that the אשׁר version would allow for a subject that is not the relative head/antecedent, whereas the ה and unmarked versions require the head to also be the subject of the participial relative. 

[Susan]

Thanks for the explanation about depth. I would not have figured out that two levels was correct here (that was just the default), but that makes sense.  The depth specified is relative to everything in the search string that doesn’t have a specified depth (i.e. = 0), then, or am I misunderstanding?

 

I had actually included “absolute” on the noun in my initial search here, but I removed after looking at the results from yours that include a couple each of עדת ישראל הנועדים and נביאי ישראל הנבאים as well as a couple others in construct. (The lack of agreement in the former is bothering me, but is that just ad sensum?)  Should those be excluded?

 

Esther 8:8 is great!

[Susan]

As I look at it....the converse of those I mentioned above occurs at Ezekiel 8:3 (i.e. the cognate pair involves the absolute noun), and based on the syntax diagram  I guess it actually is the absolute noun that is the subject (+head) of the relative clause. This is not intuitive to me, but I’ll trust you.

[Robert Holmstedt]

Yes, you are correct that there will be a few cases in which the head is bound (construct). But it might be easier to sort these out by doing a specify "construct" search and then isolating the relevant hits from all those that aren't. Also, the עדה in the one example you mention is here understood as a collective noun and yet the participle is likely referring to the individuals in the group, so the mp participle is not a problem. 

 

As for the levels, since I'm still figuring out all the implications, I should probably not venture too much. 

 

Could you clarify the question you have about Ezek 8:3?

Edited by Robert Holmstedt, 10 November 2015 - 08:53 PM.

[Susan]

At the end of Ezek 8:3 - מוֹשב סמל הקנאה המקנה - I was expecting the subject of the participial relative clause to be either סמל or מושב (just because of the sense of it, but also for gender agreement) - I wouldn’t know how to determine which - but if I understand the syntax diagram correctly, it’s marked as “2,” which refers to קנאה.

[Timothy Jenney]

I am pleased to see the new syntax features are getting a workout—and proving useful. I am still learning how to use them myself and have found this discussion helpful. I know our programmers have been working really hard on this feature.

[Robert Holmstedt]

Susan,

 

Good catch. Ezek 8:3 was incorrectly tagged. I have now fixed it for the ETS/SBL release.

[Susan]

Many thanks for your patient explanations, Dr. Holmstedt. And to Accordance for supporting these new syntax features. There are a lot of exciting possibilities here.