Re: Re. Use of BAGD

Jonathan Robie (jwrobie@mindspring.com)
Wed, 13 Nov 1996 19:06:53 -0500

At 06:37 PM 11/13/96 +0000, evans@mail.gld.com wrote:
>Jonathan,
>
>I wondered at first if I ought to come out of the closet and admit my
>deficiency in understanding how to use this particular tool
>effectively. I have gained some valuable ground floor insight on how to
>understand the mechanics from suggestions made by the list. I am
>still not sure if I can pinpoint the significance of what it is I
>actually find in BAGD and then how to best interpret that in a
>meaningful way. Thanks for reinforcing a Little Greek's confidence
>in the old axiom that only an unasked question is a foolish one!
>Paul F. Evans

Well, I do appreciate Edgar's statement that "there are no foolish or overly
simple questions in Greek, only foolish or overly simple answers". Hey, I
must be pretty safe, since I have lots of questions and not very many
answers ;->

One thing I found helpful was figuring out the numbering scheme for BAGD,
which is not explained in the intro. A RBG explained this to me a while ago.
Numbering is hierarchical. I don't have it here in the hotel room, but I
believe the hierarchy is number, Roman letter, Greek letter. The numbers
indicate major senses, and the letters are used for finer gradations of
meaning within each sense.

Let me try baiting people with a simple explanation of what Louw and Nida
do, and maybe we can goad them into giving us an equivalent simple
explanation of what BAGD does.

Louw and Nida list the senses for each word, and give each sense a
definition based on NT usage. Senses are grouped together according to
semantic similarity, and the definitions carefully distinguish the
similarities and differences among words in the same semantic domain.

Is that a good definition of what Louw and Nida do? If not, how can it be
improved? What is it that BAGD does? How does BAGD define what a word "means"?

Jonathan

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Jonathan Robie
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