I’m just about to release [MorphGNT] 5.07 and, shortly after that, a major new release I’ll designate 6.07.
I’ve decided not to reset the minor release number on a new major release to emphasis the fact that 5.07 and 6.07 are identical in the data they have in common, the 6-series just adds some extra data.
I haven’t yet decided just how much extra data will make it in the 6-series releases, but one new addition will be a column containing the surface form / inflected form / reflex (take your pick of terminology) of each word taken in isolation.
What do I mean by “taken in isolation”? Well a word like μετά could appear in the text as μετά μεθ’ μετ’ or μετὰ depending on the text after it. This new column normalises that to μετά. This happens to also be the lemma so it might not be clear what the extra value is in this case. So consider the text in Matthew 1.20 which reads:
παραλαβεῖν Μαρίαν τὴν γυναῖκά σου
Note that τὴν has a grave accent and γυναῖκά has two accents. If you were to ask someone what the accusative singular feminine article is, they’d say τήν not τὴν. Similarly, if you asked someone what the accustive of γυνή is, they’d say γυναῖκα not γυναῖκά. The reason for the differing accentuation in the text is the context: final syllable acute becomes grave unless clause-final and enclitics like σου throw their accent back to the end of the previous word.
Sometimes you want to treat the variations these cause as distinct, sometimes you don’t. By including the extra column, users of MorphGNT will have the best of both worlds.
Here is a list of possible differences between the existing text column and the new column:
- existing text may exhibit elision (e.g. μετ’ versus μετά)
- existing text may exhibit movable ς or ν
- final-acute may become grave
- enclitics may lose an accent
- word preceding an enclitic may gain an extra accent
- the οὐ / οὐκ / οὐχ alternation
The new column normalises all these differences.
originally published on jtauber.com