Using colour to highlight accent rank, using JDP

[Ewan MacLeod]

If anyone is studying the Hebrew accents in detail, the JDP accent database in BW6 will prove invaluable. Maybe the following suggestion will also be helpful.

As well as a musical function, the accents allow the sentence to be broken down into smaller and smaller units (in a similar way to punctuation) so that subordinate and co-ordinate clauses can be understood. For complex verses, this can be essential to understanding the verse. Traditionally, the Massoretes understood five ranks of accents - emperors, kings, dukes, officers and servants. The JDP accent database records these ranks.

In my WTT version, I did a search on all these ranks (near and remote separately) then used the Text Highlight facility to colour the text according to the rank of its accent. Words with an Emperor accent are purple; words with Kings are blue; words with Dukes are red; words with Officers are green, and Servants are yellow. Near and Remote variants get dark and light equivalents respectively. This highlights every word according to the rank of its accent.

Thus, when you look at a verse, you can instantly and graphically see how the structure of the verse is made up - where the breaks occur, which clauses are subordinate, which words are conjunctives and should be read with the next word, and so on. It is a very powerful way to make the accents come alive, and understand their function in the sentence. You can quickly learn the ranks of the different accents.

Regards,

Ewan MacLeod

[Ben Spackman]

"where the breaks occur, which clauses are subordinate, which words are conjunctives and should be read with the next word, and so on." At least according to the Massoretes...

Interesting usage of the color tool.

[Joe Fleener]

Ewan,

This is a great example of how you use the program.

Could you give an example command line search you used to locate all the, lets say, near and far Emporer accents?

One thing I noticed, is that the JDP is a morphology database, but the command line morphology help does not seem to work for it.

Thanks,

[Ewan MacLeod]

Ewan,

This is a great example of how you use the program.

Could you give an example command line search you used to locate all the, lets say, near and far Emporer accents?

Thanks,
The accents are completely different in the poetic books (Job, Psalms and Proverbs) to the other books. So if we take an example of the prose books, you first need to limit your search to these books (i.e. in Search, Set Search Limits, disable the books Psalms, Job and Proverbs). Then set your search version to JDP.

There is only one "near" Emperor (i.e. near in the sense of being nearest to the end of the verse), which is the silluq - i.e. in general every verse ends with a silluq (and a sof pasuk, but that's not an accent). So with JDP as your search version, type on the command line:

.*@*+Ae (.*@*+Ae)*

which will find all the Silluqs (normally the last word of each verse). Then use the Text Highlighter to set the search results to the colour of your choice.
The only remote Emperor is the Atnach at the logical middle of the verse, e.g. in general every verse will have an atnach half way through to mark the middle. Here is the command line search for this:

.*@*+BE*

Then use the Text Highlighter to colour these.
There are not many accents, so just use a command line similar to the one above for each one, and shade the text appropriately.


Ewan,

One thing I noticed, is that the JDP is a morphology database, but the command line morphology help does not seem to work for it.

Thanks,
The normal (WTM) morphology is displayed, but not any information specific to the accents.

Regards,

Ewan MacLeod