Participles and Computer searches

Randy Leedy Rleedy at bju.edu
Fri Mar 26 16:18:44 EST 1999


Ted Mann is asking about the difference between BibleWorks 3.5 and
Accordance in their reports about the numbers of participles in the
various NT books. Perhaps someone has already explained this issue
more fully today; I get only the digests, and at the end of
yesterday's digest the matter remained somewhat unresolved. I hope my
post does not prove pointless or redundant.

Jim Poulsen is on the right track in describing the difference as due
to differences between Friberg taggings (used in BW 3.5) and Gramcord
taggings (used in Accordance) in the respective databases. The portion
of my review he quoted (and thanks, Jim, for the kind words) doesn't
address this particular issue, but another portion does. Note 14 (in
the current version of the review) reads:
"Other quirks (or features, depending on one's perspective) of Greek
morphology found in BIBLEWORKS include the use of middle deponent and
passive deponent as separate voices and subdivision of participles
into ordinary participles and imperatival participles....  The
treatment of participles is misguided in my opinion; many participles
tagged as imperatival are more accurately viewed as circumstantial to
a governing imperative (e.g. Col. 2:7). When searching for
participles, one must remember to search for both participles and
imperatival participles, or else the search results will be
incomplete."

I don't have 3.5 on my system any more, so I can't do the search for
all ptcps to compare with Accordance. However, the just-released
BibleWorks 4.0 contains an all-new morphological database that, by the
way, encompasses both LXX and NT (with a uniform tagging scheme). Its
participle counts for each NT book match precisely, in each book, with
those that have been previously reported from Accordance.

The original question, as I understood it, though, was how the various
books rank in the FREQUENCY of participle occurrence. I don't recall
seeing that matter  addressed except in raw numbers, which are not
especially meaningful. The following statistics from BibleWorks should
be helpful, though not definitive, since they show only the percentage
of verses with at least one participle rather than the percentage of
WORDS that ARE participles. These percentages could be calculated
without too much difficulty, but my time is too short to take that
step just now. I've ranked the books in order of frequency in the
right-most column, which I believe is probably most helpful. I doubt
that these columns will align on most systems: I hope they're close
enough to be helpful.

Explanations: 
col 2: Verses in the book containing a participle
col 3: Participles in the book
col 4: Total verses in the book
col 5: % of verses containing a participle

---------------------------------------------------------
 1	 2	 3		 4		 5
Book	Vss	Ptcps		# vss		%vss
---------------------------------------------------------
2Pe 	49	88		61 		80.33% 
Jud 	20	39		25 		80.00% 
Act	738	1283		1006		73.36%
1Pe 	75	119		105 		71.43% 
Heb 	201	315		303 		66.34% 
2Jo 	8	12		13 		61.54% 
Luk	698	1069		1151 		60.64%
Rev 	244	395		405 		60.25% 
Mat	599	936		1071		55.93%
Mar	371	562		678		54.72%
1Ti 	59	81		113 		52.21% 
Col 	48	77		95 		50.53% 
Tit 	23	32		46 		50.00% 
Eph 	76	107		155 		49.03%  
3Jo 	7	11		15 		46.67%  
2Co 	119	196		256		46.48% 
2Ti 	36	55		83 		43.37% 
Jam 	46	70		108 		42.59% 
Rom 	178	255		433 		41.11% 
Gal 	61	83		149		40.94% 
1Th 	36	58		89 		40.45% 
Phi	42	56		104 		40.38% 
Joh 	350	486		879		39.82%
1Jo 	41	58		105 		39.05% 
2Th 	17	26		47 		36.17% 
1Co 	128	182		437 		29.29% 
Phm 	5	7		25 		20.00% 

Readers will of course beware of the dangers of generalizing
conclusions based statistics drawn from small samples.

****************************
In love to God and neighbor,
Randy Leedy
Bob Jones University
Greenville, SC
RLeedy at bju.edu
****************************




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