Searching for roots in Qal without a complement

[Mark Allison]

Can anyone help Kevin out?

 

I have a quick question about a search I am trying to perform. I am not sure how to do it. I am looking for all roots in Qal that may or may not have a complement. So here are some examples in English:

 

The man is eating vs. The man is eating bread

 

The man broke the window vs. The window broke

 

The first set of examples is what I am looking for, since the translations would be the following:

 

האיש אוכל vs האיש אוכל את הלחם

 

The second set of examples would require a shift to Niphal for the second clause.

 

If you could help me with this, I'd really appreciate it. I can't figure out how to do something like "may or may not" without turning up all those roots that require a complement or those that don't. In other words, I am looking for just the verbs that alternate.

[Helen Brown]

In broad terms I think the best you can do is find the verbs that do have a complement in your specified text, and them use the HITS command or item in a Construct to find the same verbs when they appear without a complement. HITS uses the list of lexical forms found in the specified tab.

[Robert Holmstedt]

This needs to be addressed in two parts.

 

First, on finding a Qal (or any binyan) verb that has no complement, or in the language of the database, is monovalent. As you might imagine, "not" finding something is an order more difficult than finding something, which means that you need to anticipate the likely variations. The search in the image below is how Accordance will *eventually* be able to search for this; note that currently Accordance does not allow successive columns negatives, but I've been told that they will address this in the near future for precisely these kind of searches.

 

 

Second, for verbs that have both monovalent (no complement) and bivalent (one complement) manifestations, use the method Helen suggested.