challenging or impossible search: spelling interchanges in Greek papyri

[bpkantor]

Here is a question. I want to know if it is possible to search for spelling interchanges in modules that cover Greek papyri like the Judaean Desert texts or something like that.

 

For example, if I want to find all the times that the word τιμή is spelled τειμή. I know it might be easier to do this for just one word. However, if I want to search for all the places where lexical ι is spelled with ει, and so on, etc.

 

Is this possible?

[bpkantor]

Update:

 

The best I have come up with so far is to basically just progress through each word as follows:

 

 

"?ει*"@?ι*

"??ει*"@??ι*

"???ει*"@???ι*

 

This will work as long as I go through to use enough question marks to cover the longest word in the text. However, it will only work if there are no other spelling variations in the word which make the number of characters different than the lexical item. Nevertheless, it seems to work fairly well, but I would certainly appreciate it if anyone could come up with something better.

[timplanche]

Here's my best go

 

As the word is tagged with he lexeme you can use the following

 

τιμή <NOT> τιμή@"?ιμ*"

 

seems to work just for τιμή - it is more complex if you want to look for the +τιμή root form

 

If you do a "research search it looks across the texts - just quickly looking at this the spelling appears worse in the Codices vaticanus and Bezae

[Ken Simpson]

Actually Tim’s search gives the correct answer in the JDM, but isn’t quite constructed correctly IMHO FWIW.

 

τιμή <NOT> τιμή@"?ιμ*” will find every verse where the lexical form of τιμή is present, and also there is a form that is τιμή without the ιμ incorporated somewhere. This search would exclude verses where the variant was found in the same verse as the normal spelling of  τιμή so you would miss some hits. The search is looking for 2 terms, which in some cases can be the same word.

 

Rather I would construct it like this

 

τιμή@-"?ιμ*”

 

This means that we find only the words with lexical τιμή that do not contain the letters ιμ at position 2 or 3. This obviously excludes imperfect, perfect and pluperfect forms (as does Tim’s) so the extensions you suggest are needed to include them. using a * at the front probably makes it too general. I just tried it and it said there are no forms in the current corpus like that. That feels like a bug to me.

 

You can easily make that looking at the τιμή root just by adding a + sign to the beginning, but does not change the results in this case.

[timplanche]

Thanks Ken - that seems a far more elegant solution

- though I was also trying like you for the more general solution of finding all misspelled forms of the root form to also include verbal, adjectival and command words such as τιμάω or ἐπιτιμάω etc. The following should work  - but it returns no results - 

 

+τιμή@-"*ιμ*"

 

Are you suggesting this is a bug?

 

(also my older less elegant form has an identical problem

τιμή <NOT> τιμή@"*ιμ*")

[Ken Simpson]

 

+τιμή@-"*ιμ*"

 

Are you suggesting this is a bug?

 

 

That is my sense. I have posted in the bug forums about it. Haven’t looked to see if I’ve had a programmers answer yet.