Morphology with Cascading Stylesheets (CSS)

Jonathan Robie
Posts: 4158
Joined: May 5th, 2011, 5:34 pm
Location: Durham, NC
Contact:

Re: Morphology with Cascading Stylesheets (CSS)

Post by Jonathan Robie »

TimNelson wrote:
Jonathan Robie wrote:You can see this in the Gospel of Luke. I need to do a bunch of clean-up, creating a better way to navigate, breaking it down to chapter, etc., but I hope this mockup can demonstrate what it's like to read with the morphology coloring.
My main complaint is that, in your key (which doesn't have a background), it's difficult to tell whether a mark goes on the left of one word, or the right of the other. Nothing major, but I thought the feedback might help.
See if you like it better now. I put the key in a fixed position on the left for now.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
TimNelson
Posts: 61
Joined: October 17th, 2014, 11:04 pm
Location: Australia, Victoria, Geelong

Re: Morphology with Cascading Stylesheets (CSS)

Post by TimNelson »

Jonathan Robie wrote:
TimNelson wrote:
Jonathan Robie wrote:You can see this in the Gospel of Luke. I need to do a bunch of clean-up, creating a better way to navigate, breaking it down to chapter, etc., but I hope this mockup can demonstrate what it's like to read with the morphology coloring.
My main complaint is that, in your key (which doesn't have a background), it's difficult to tell whether a mark goes on the left of one word, or the right of the other. Nothing major, but I thought the feedback might help.
See if you like it better now. I put the key in a fixed position on the left for now.
Much better :).
--
Tim Nelson
B. Sc. (Computer Science), M. Div. Looking for work (in computing or language-related jobs).
Jonathan Robie
Posts: 4158
Joined: May 5th, 2011, 5:34 pm
Location: Durham, NC
Contact:

Re: Morphology with Cascading Stylesheets (CSS)

Post by Jonathan Robie »

cwconrad wrote:
Jonathan Robie wrote:[And software is not the enemy of paper. Currently, I'm using software to generate paper handouts for classes on Sundays ...
I appreciate your whole comment in response to my question, Jonathan. But I thought you told me that you were using those handouts in your Sunday classes because people had gotten rusty with their recognition of forms -- their parsing. That's an aid to using the text for discussion, but it does seem like something that an interlinear does.
I'm taking the liberty of moving this to a thread where I discuss the software Micheal and I are working on.

I don't think it does the same thing as an interlinear - except that it does help people who are rusty with forms. It does this in a very different way, though. It does not introduce a metalanguage. It does not introduce new text that is separate from the Greek text itself.

Let's compare. Here is a typical example of morphology as shown in most software today:
luke17-27-morph.png
luke17-27-morph.png (55.64 KiB) Viewed 2464 times
The metalanguage drowns the Greek text, and it is of little help in recognizing patterns. For each Greek word, there are up to 8 letters that each have an associated name and coding conventions, in an obscure code associated with English words. You can't easily recognize similarities among the forms of verbs that have the same tense and voice (using patterns to learn morphology), or the way that tenses are used to build the narrative in the passage (using patterns as a basis for analyzing the text as a text).

Compare that to this:
luke17-27-colored.png
luke17-27-colored.png (77.35 KiB) Viewed 2464 times
There is no metalanguage or English to interfere with reading the Greek per se. The colors correlate with what is going on in morphology, not the names of tenses. And the colors are actually useful for interpretation.

Obviously, it would be better if everyone simply knew all verb forms and were always sensitive to the way verbs are used to create a narrative. But to get people there, I think it's best to create tools that do not interfere with paying attention to the Greek text per se, stumbling over the morphology associated with tense, aspect, voice, and mood in running text, and helps see how this relates to the meaning of a passage. I don't think this kind of tool interferes with language learning.

Of course, the way to find out is to devise experiments that measure different approaches ... and I don't think this kind of aid is sufficient to teach the principal parts. It's just one tool, not the entire toolbox.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
TimNelson
Posts: 61
Joined: October 17th, 2014, 11:04 pm
Location: Australia, Victoria, Geelong

Re: Morphology with Cascading Stylesheets (CSS)

Post by TimNelson »

Jonathan Robie wrote:Obviously, it would be better if everyone simply knew all verb forms and were always sensitive to the way verbs are used to create a narrative. But to get people there, I think it's best to create tools that do not interfere with paying attention to the Greek text per se, stumbling over the morphology associated with tense, aspect, voice, and mood in running text, and helps see how this relates to the meaning of a passage. I don't think this kind of tool interferes with language learning.
Do you think it would be more useful to colour the parts that indicate the form in question? For example, colouring the μεν/ντ/οτ/whatever for participles?
--
Tim Nelson
B. Sc. (Computer Science), M. Div. Looking for work (in computing or language-related jobs).
Stephen Carlson
Posts: 3351
Joined: May 11th, 2011, 10:51 am
Location: Melbourne
Contact:

Re: Morphology with Cascading Stylesheets (CSS)

Post by Stephen Carlson »

What part of εἶπον can be colored to indicate that it is aorist?
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
TimNelson
Posts: 61
Joined: October 17th, 2014, 11:04 pm
Location: Australia, Victoria, Geelong

Re: Morphology with Cascading Stylesheets (CSS)

Post by TimNelson »

Stephen Carlson wrote:What part of εἶπον can be colored to indicate that it is aorist?
I should clarify. Jonathan is using a colour-scheme to indicate aorists. I'm simply advocating that he colour eg. the o in εἶπον with his aorist colours. I agree that's the odd one out, being a suppletive, but I still think it can be done :).
--
Tim Nelson
B. Sc. (Computer Science), M. Div. Looking for work (in computing or language-related jobs).
Jonathan Robie
Posts: 4158
Joined: May 5th, 2011, 5:34 pm
Location: Durham, NC
Contact:

Re: Morphology with Cascading Stylesheets (CSS)

Post by Jonathan Robie »

TimNelson wrote:Do you think it would be more useful to colour the parts that indicate the form in question? For example, colouring the μεν/ντ/οτ/whatever for participles?
I'm not sure this is the view to do it in. That would be helpful in an analytical lexicon, and probably in the verb explorer experiment, but I think it gets too busy for just reading a text and I don't want to go overboard.

Also ... I have to wait for James to provide me with the morphology before this is possible.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
Mark Lightman
Posts: 300
Joined: May 6th, 2011, 6:30 pm

Re: Morphology with Cascading Stylesheets (CSS)

Post by Mark Lightman »

Stephen Carlson wrote:What part of εἶπον can be colored to indicate that it is aorist?
ε-ϝεπ-ο-ν --> ε-επ-ο-ν --> εἶπον
Jonathan Robie wrote:There is no metalanguage or English to interfere with reading the Greek per se.
καλὸν οὖν ἐστι.
Stephen Carlson
Posts: 3351
Joined: May 11th, 2011, 10:51 am
Location: Melbourne
Contact:

Re: Morphology with Cascading Stylesheets (CSS)

Post by Stephen Carlson »

Mark Lightman wrote:
Stephen Carlson wrote:What part of εἶπον can be colored to indicate that it is aorist?
ε-ϝεπ-ο-ν --> ε-επ-ο-ν --> εἶπον
There's some question whether εἶπον comes from *ε-ϝεπ-ο-ν or *ε-ϝειπ-ο-ν, but the point is that these second aorists look morphologically just like imperfects, except for their root.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
jtauber
Posts: 60
Joined: May 31st, 2011, 11:34 am
Location: Burlington, MA, USA
Contact:

Re: Morphology with Cascading Stylesheets (CSS)

Post by jtauber »

Jonathan Robie wrote:Also ... I have to wait for James to provide me with the morphology before this is possible.
Actively working on it!
James Tauber
http://jktauber.com/
Post Reply

Return to “Syntax and Grammar”