Technology and Grammar
Paul Cheung
CheungWH at abs.edu
Fri Aug 16 23:04:55 EDT 2002
In my own work on figuring out whether there is a pattern to the order of subject and object when both substantives are governed by an infinitive (and hence both are in the accusative case) in the NT, both the advantage and limitation of technology become quite clear.
Instead of having to search through the entire NTfor instances of an infinitive with two accusatives and discover that there are only a hundred of so instances of such a construction, the computer can reduce the search to figuring out the hundred or so instances out of, depending on your search parameters, about a few hundred. This is a vast savings of time and effort.
Still, as mentioned by others, the computer does not know when a phrase begins and when it ends. One still has to judge, based on one's knowledge of Greek, whether a particular result spewed out by the program is a valid instance. If the acceptable length of the string on the search is too long, a lot of irrelevant materials will be generated. Too short a string, however, means the database generated is liable to be incomplete, due simply to the variability of the Greek language (present in all languages in different ways).
The upshot is, while the program can generate a result/database based on certain decisions prescribed by the user, it is ultimately the Greek knowledge of the user that will be tested in the end (or rather, from the beginning to the end, as in the example above.) The database generated may well be useless unless the user already possesses some familiarity of the language. This of course, is a truism. But the proliferation of technology does mean that scholars now will be proportionately spending more time checking each other's results than before. Thus technology helps save time and effort, but it also asks for more time and effort to be spent in the area of checking each other's results and conclusions, now that more people are capable of putting forward new hpotheses and results. IOW, part of the leisure afforded by technology is used up in the process of separating the chaff from the wheat, and the trivial from the non-trivial. This is the economics of technology.
MTCW,
Paul Cheung
MTCW,
Paul Cheung
>>> "hefin jones" <hefinjones at hotmail.com> 08/17/02 09:56AM >>>
What James Tauber said in his last mail can serve as a corrective to the
idea that gramcord/accordance is a sufficiently powerful tool to do more
sophisticated searches. The problem with gramcord/accordance is that it is
simply too close to the lexical level and very unwieldy when trying out
searches based on constituent structure. These observations have been made
in a more sophisticated manner by MPalmer in "When is a Phrase a Phrase"
Hefin Jones
Sydney Australia
"Eric S. Weiss"
>Subject: [b-greek] Re: Technology and Grammar
>Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2002 11:54:13 -0400
>
>I believe that some of this was done by Dan Wallace in writing and
>checking his exegetical syntax book, GREEK GRAMMAR BEYOND THE BASICS. His
>syntax categories and exegetical conclusions were at times based on
>computer examinations of the Greek text. I think he also has
>discussed/used this methodology for some of his essays at www.bible.org
>("The Prof's Soapbox). He at least has mentioned how programs like
>accordance and gramcord now allow scholars and even students to validate
>or determine grammatical "rules" or usages with greater precision and
>speed than has ever before been possible.
>
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