Count Search, excepting other biblical passages within the same count

[NicholasEllis]

We're setting up a vocabulary acquisition program in which students who have mastered a certain occurrence of GNT vocabulary words (i.e., [COUNT]), then progressively work through the vocabulary of other books (i.e., [RANGE]). As we extract the vocabulary for progressively more advanced, we don't want to repeat vocabulary from the previously studied texts.

 

Our initial stab at this was as follows:

 

First, establish a Beginner Corpus of 23x and above in GNT:

[COUNT 23-100000]

This works great, simple search that it is.

 

Then, to establish the four levels of vocabulary content drawn from vocabulary 1-22x in the GNT I do the following:

 

First Canonical Corpus is from John 1-3:

[COUNT 1-22] <AND> [RANGE John 1-3]

This also works perfectly fine, and I'll use this tab (GNT-T) for my future [HITS] search below.

 

Second Canonical Corpus is from Matthew 5-7, drawing only on GNT words occurring 1-22x, and excluding the 1-22x words found in John 1-3 that comprise the hits in the GNT-T window. Therefore, I remove those HITS from my Matthew 5-7|1-22x search:

[COUNT 1-22] <AND> [RANGE Matt 5-7] <NOT> [HITS GNT-T]

 

This unfortunately doesn't work; for example, in Matthew 5:14 we find the terms κρυβῆναι and ἐπάνω. ἐπάνω occurs in the hits from John 1-3, and so should be excluded from the Matthew 5-7 search, which it is. However, κρύπτω does not occur in John 1-3|1-22x, and occurs 18x in the GNT, so it should be found here in the Matthew text. However, we see that all of Matthew 5:14 is removed from the Matthew 5-7 search, with neither words occurring.

 

 

My intention for the Third and Fourth Levels (1-2 Thessalonians, and James, respectively) would be similar, simply continuing to remove those hits from the previous search tabs from the next level of search. But until I get the Second Canonical Corpus (Matthew 5-7), I can't build any further.

 

Any thoughts or hints on what I'm doing wrong? I wonder whether the HITS is removing the actual verse from the COUNT command, and so removing any verse in which any of those terms occurs. If so, is there another way to approach this?

 

Thanks,

 

Nick Ellis

[Darryl]

Hi Nick,

 

If I understand you correctly, to exclude the hits from the range of John 1-3. Try the following:

 

[COUNT 1-22]@-[HITS GNT-T] <AND> [RANGE Matt 5-7]

 

This way you are specifying that any frequency count between 1-22 will not be (@-) the same as the hits in the GNT. The @ symbol combines the count and hits commands with the minus symbols negating the hits.

 

Hope I've explained that clearly enough. Let me know if I did not. Hope that helps.

 

Darryl

[jpkang]

[COUNT 1-22]@-[HITS GNT-T] <AND> [RANGE Matt 5-7]

 

was my first guess, too, but Accordance gives an error with that syntax.

 

UDPATE: Never mind, there must have been something wrong with my setup in 9.2.1; starting over with a new workspace yielded the search.

[Darryl]

Strange. This might be a bug. Nick's example of κρύπτω in Matt. 5: 14 is in the results. I've confirmed the search on my machine running Acc 9.2. Perhaps it was introduced in 9.2.1?

 

Darryl

[NicholasEllis]

Darryl, that was explained perfectly. I wasn't familiar with the @ command (which will be helpful in the future, no doubt).

 

I don't actually see the error in the κρύπτο in Mat 5:14; it should in fact appear in the Matthew search window, as it occurs 18x, so is within the count parameter, and does not occur within John 1-3, so is not excluded by the @-.

 

I'll verify further, but I think this works quite well. I'm very grateful to you both for the quick responses!

 

Nick

[jpkang]

Just to clarify, Darryl's reference to a possible bug was to the error I initially got on my setup trying to do the same search he suggested, not to the correct presence of κρύπτω in Matthew 5:14... Unintended association by juxtaposition!

[Darryl]

You are correct in that there is not an error in the results. I should have said, "'I've confirmed the search on my machine running Acc 9.2 and Nick's example..." That was an error in my phrasing.

 

Darryl

[NicholasEllis]

Ah, understood, should have read that more carefully. :-)

 

 

 

To take this a step further, and to stack these searches, I presume we can add the HITS? So:

 

GNT-T: [COUNT 1-22] <AND> [RANGE John 1-3]

GNT-T 2: [COUNT 1-22]@-[HITS GNT-T] <AND> [RANGE Matt 5-7]

GNT-T 3: [COUNT 1-22]@-[HITS GNT-T] <AND> [COUNT 1-22]@-[HITS GNT-T 2] <AND> [RANGE 1 Thess; 2 Thess]

GNT-T 4: [COUNT 1-22]@-[HITS GNT-T] <AND> [COUNT 1-22]@-[HITS GNT-T 2] <AND> [COUNT 1-22]@-[HITS GNT-T 3] <AND> [RANGE James]

GNT-T 5: etc. etc.

 

 

 

Again, the purpose is to have progressively fewer vocabulary words, as students progress through the canon; we are limiting each new lesson to 1-22x, minus the additional vocabulary learned in the foregoing lessons (in this case, John 1-3, then also 1-2 Thess).