Another crasis problem

[countach]

I was reading with interest the crasis problem discussed earlier.

 

This made me wonder how the Greek authorities treat the situation. I had always considered a crasis be a kind of etymological explanation of the origin of a word like καν, but that it was still a word, and not simply two words written funny.

 

So I looked to see what the lexicons say. If I triple click on καν, it take me to the lexicon entry for και. However this is not correct. All the lexicons have a separate entry for καν.

[Helen Brown]

The triple-click shortcut searches for the lemma, in this case the first lemma of the two. You can find the inflected crasis form by pressing option as you amplify to the lexicon, as you can for any inflected form.

 

Accordance has been treating crasis in the same way for 14 years, and hardly any questions have been raised about it until now. In all our tagged Greek texts the inflected crasis form is related to the lemmas from which it is derived. It is as if there is a second invisible inflected form which can be found by searching for "crasis". The first lemma is on the visible inflected crasis form, and the second is on the invisible form. Both lemmas are seen in the parsing window, not the Instant Details, and will show even if you parse only the crasis form.

 

We may be able to improve this, but both crasis and variants are knotty problems for parsing and searching.

[countach]

I've never heard of a crasis being referred to as "inflected".

 

Usually a lemma is a form found in the lexicon.

 

hardly any questions have been raised about it until now.

 

There are comments out there apparently:

 

http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/ElAnt/V5N1/duhoux.html

[Helen Brown]

I do not think it is very helpful to point to a review that is almost 10 years old! The reviewer was very critical, mainly of errors in the text databases over which at that time we had no control. I can assure our users that all our own texts are corrected when we become aware of errors. Errors in other texts are reported to the scholars who maintain them, and we do receive and release the updated versions from time to time. Specifically, we no longer use the GRAMCORD GNT, and our GNT-T does now have lemmas on the articles, among many other enhancements.

 

I think that the reason that the crasis form is not assigned a single crasis lemma is that it would not then be searchable as a form of either of the component lemmas. Now that we allow root searches it would be possible to define a double root for a single crasis lemma, but the default searches are for lemmas, and we will not lightly make such a fundamental change.

[Joe Weaks]

I've never heard of a crasis being referred to as "inflected".

I would consider it the norm to refer to all occurrences of a word "in the field" as an inflected form. If you find λεγω in a text, it's still the inflected form, no less so than λεγει, even though it happens also be the lexical form. The fact that lexicons have καν and καγω and the like is done in the same spirit as including other odd, inflected forms, second aorists, etc.

 

I think Accordance's handling of crasis 14 years ago was rather brilliant, though it has a limitation recently discussed, one that I've only noticed myself recently, though I've been using Accordance longer that I've been married (and that seems like a LOOONG time).