Entering Hebrew Lexical, Inflected, Letter, and Root Forms

You can search for the lexical, inflected, letter, and rootClosed A root is a unit of a language that cannot be further divided, from which words are derived by modification. The root does not necessarily survive as a word in itself. The Accordance roots may combine homographs and therefore a single root may include roots with different etymologies and meanings. In Hebrew, by convention, the lexical form (lemma) of a verb is the same as the root. forms in Hebrew tagged texts. When performing a search using a lexical formClosed The canonical (dictionary) form of a word as the argument, all occurrences of words from that lexical root are found.

The following table summarizes options for entering the lexical form, inflected formClosed The word as it appears in the original text, which may be modified from its base dictionary form, or root form in the Search Entry box with the mouse.

Form Search Menu Right-Click Resulting Dialog Box
Lexical Enter Lexical Forms Enter>Lexeme Select Lexical Forms
Inflected Enter Inflected Forms Enter>Inflected Select Inflected Forms
Letters Enter Letter Forms    
Root Press Opt+ and choose Enter Root Forms Enter>Root Select Root Forms

 

Note

The Enter Lexical Forms item changes to Enter Root Forms if Opt+ is pressed before the menu is opened.

You can also enter the lexical form, inflected form, or root form in the Search Entry box manually. When entering manually, be sure to note the text direction.

Form How Entered Example
Lexical Type the word
Exact Lexical Form Type the word with any pointing, preceded by an equal sign
Inflected Type the word in quotation marks
Exact Inflected Form Type the word preceded by an equal sign; these are surrounded by quotation marks
Root Type the word preceded by a plus sign

The rest of this topic looks at additional considerations when performing a search for Hebrew lexical, inflected, and root forms.

The Select Lexical Forms dialog box is used to choose the lexical form(s) to enter in the Search Entry box. Available lexical forms are taken from all words in the search text.

  • A list of available lexical forms is displayed in the left of the dialog box, together with the matching English glossClosed Short definition of a word.
  • Three dots (…) at the end of a definition indicates the gloss is too long to be displayed.

The list of lexical forms distinguishes between the vowel forms of each word.

  • Verb lemmas are unpointed.
  • All other lemmas have vowel points.
  • In addition, some lemmas have been numbered with 0_ for Aramaic words, or with 1_, 2_, etc. to distinguish homographs with identical vowel pointing but different meanings. The figure below shows nine forms for the letters אמר, with some with very different meanings.

If Use exact lexemeClosed A meaningful linguistic unit that is an item in the vocabulary of a language is selected in the Select Lexical Forms dialog box, an equal sign (=) is added before each word in the Search Entry box. This constrains the search to the exact selected form.

If the Use exact lexeme option is not selected, only the consonants of the selected words are placed in the Search Entry box. If a homograph number is added after the lemmaClosed The canonical (dictionary) form of a word, without the equal sign, the search is performed for all words derived from these letters with that number, but still ignores any vowel points.

When you perform a search using an inflected form, only occurrences of that specific inflected form are found, that is, the exact same letters as appear in the search argument.

Use the Select Inflected Forms dialog box to choose any word that occurs in the search text. Words added to the search argument via this dialog box are automatically surrounded by quotation marks. Glosses do not appear in this list since they are attached to the lexical rather than the inflected forms.

If Use exact form is selected in the Select Inflected Forms dialog box, an equal sign (=) is placed before each word in the Search Entry box, and the form is entered exactly as selected. This constrains the search to that exact form, as described above, and lets you distinguish forms with specific vowel pointing.

If Use exact form is not selected, the word is entered with the letters only.

When you perform a search for the root form, all occurrences of words based on the root are found. When the root form is entered via the Select Root Forms dialog box, a plus sign (+) is automatically entered before the root.