In greek-inflexion and an Update on the Morphological Lexicon I said that all the verbs in the MorphGNT SBLGNT analysis should be done by the end of the year. I hit that goal and made a decent start on the Septuagint.

As mentioned in that previous post, by May 2016 I could generate every single verb form in:

  • Louise Pratt’s intermediate grammar
  • Helma Dik’s Greek verb handouts
  • Andrew Keller & Stephanie Russell’s beginner-intermediate text book

On December 8th, I’d actually finished coverage of all the verbs in the MorphGNT SBLGNT (with a little bit of help from Nathan Smith).

The stem database is available at https://github.com/jtauber/greek-inflexion/blob/morphgnt/morphgnt_lexicon.yaml. I should emphasize, though, this is just a first pass and there’s more work to do but the coverage is now there.

I immediately started work on applying the greek-inflexion code and stemming rules to the CATSS analysis of the LXX. By the end of 2016, I’d built a stem database and updated the stemming rules to cover the Pentateuch, 1 Maccabees, Jonah, Nahum, and Ezra-Nehamiah. Work on the rest of the CATSS analysis will continue over the next few months.

I decided to start a new stem database from scratch for the LXX (although I recently wrote a script to compare stem databases for inconsistencies). My primary reason for this was to see if I ended up with the same analysis for a verb stem as a way of catching potential errors in my original MorphGNT analysis. The classical Greek exemplars listed above, the MorphGNT SBLGNT and the LXX analysis all share the same stemming rules, though.

My reasons for doing the stem analysis on the CATSS morphological analysis were threefold:

  • expand coverage of the stem database to more parts for existing verbs as well as new verbs
  • provide broader tests for the stemming rules
  • prepare for a morphological analysis of the Swete text of the LXX/OG.

A fourth benefit quickly emerged, though: I found errors in the CATSS analysis.

I’ve been maintaining patch files which, after a review pass, I’ll contribute back to CCAT (if they are interested). Fun fact: it was contributing corrections back to the CCAT’s GNT analysis which started me on the path to MorphGNT 24 years ago!

The patches are available at https://github.com/jtauber/greek-inflexion/tree/lxx/lxxmorph. They need to be reviewed as they all pretty much assume the text is correct (including accentuation, which was a major reason for the corrections I made) and I’ve redone the analysis without considering context. An easy way to contribute would be to help review these patch files.

All this work on greek-inflexion has led to some improvements to the underlying inflexion library as well as numerous corrections to greek-accentuation.

Work on the LXX coverage will continue as well as expansion to other texts (both Hellenistic and Classical).

Also in an early stage is better modeling of stem formation and endings.

Finally, the fruits of all this will soon be applied to the online Greek reader I talked about at SBL 2016, with a goal to release a prototype for the Johannine gospel and epistles in a couple of months.