1

As a Torah reader, I like to find nuances and inherent meanings in trope (cantillation) nuances and "unusual" occurrences in the Torah. For example I'm looking for all the places that have two consecutive:

  • pazer
  • zarka
  • zakef gadol

as well as the verses having no etnatchta and ones having an etnachata on the 1st word of the verse.

These are just examples of some of the items I seek. I'm not looking for answers to the specific items. But, I know that there is an on-line search tool to locate words and phrases. Is there any on-line tool or, if not, a hardcopy book that enumerates such trope occurrences such as what I mentioned?

I'm currently focusing on just Torah, but if there's one that handles Tana"ch that would be even better. I know that Iyov (Job), Mishlei (Proverbs) and Tehilim (Psalms) have different tropes, so if there's one that could include that - even better.

| improve this question | |
  • 5
    quantifiedcantillation.nl h/t @msh210 chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/26457249#26457249 – Double AA♦ Feb 9 '16 at 18:57
  • 1
    @DoubleAA Wow! Now this looks interesting, as a quick look! I have to test this out at home. Hey, you're not shy are you? This is an answer! – DanF Feb 9 '16 at 19:02
  • 1
    Beware it has some unusual variants in its underlying text, so take any results with a +/- 2 or so. – Double AA♦ Feb 9 '16 at 19:03
  • 4
    @DoubleAA wow this is such a great find at so many levels; this should be an answer and not a comment :) – RonP Feb 9 '16 at 21:34
  • I've thought about building something like that. I think it wouldn't be too difficult to put together; you'd need the text of the Tanach with trope, and then you'd need to parse it once in order to create a file of useful data. With that data file, you can query it with a regex or something. If you have a little programming knowledge, this may be a good project. – Mauro Braunstein Feb 10 '16 at 13:21
8

I don't have enough rep to comment above, but I'm the creator of quantifiedcantillation.nl, and since I saw a few referrals from this question I thought I'd stop by. It looks like my site should be able to answer all of your questions. (Thanks, @Double-AA!)

For the etnakhta question, if you go to the settings (small cog icon in the lower left) you can limit searches to the beginnings of p'sukim.

@MauroBraunstein, my work is on GitHub. The code is a bit of a mess, but I do exactly what you suggest: I have a python script to parse the raw data (and do some cleaning). Then the javascript just loads that file and generates the interactive visualization with D3. Feel free to mess with it, and let me know if you have any questions or suggestions :)

| improve this answer | |
  • 1
    Thanks Noleli! Welcome to Mi Yodeya :) Looking forward to seeing all of Tanakh up on your site soon – Double AA♦ Feb 11 '16 at 4:25
  • Fantastic tool! I'm appreciating some of the unique correlations in there and pondering meanings... Can you add in a reverse sequential search? In other words, how often X is PROCEEDED by Y? You can sort of figure it out if you dig through everything, but it would be convenient... – Isaac Kotlicky Feb 11 '16 at 13:49
  • for instance, every mercha kefula is proceeded by a darga, every shalsheles is at the start of a possuk, etc. Another interesting outcome is that the Aseres Hadibros are the only place where we don't end with a sof possuk... – Isaac Kotlicky Feb 11 '16 at 13:52
  • Thanks, @IsaacKotlicky! I agree that it'd be nice to be able to query forward and backward. Maybe some day :) The Dibros were interesting, too. I discuss it a bit in the blog post describing the tool, but I had to use the takhton pasuk divisions even though I'm using the elyon trop. – Noleli Feb 12 '16 at 2:51
  • Hi Noleli. I was about to type another question, when this (my own, of course) question appeared in the search. Does your site also include parsha break at an etnachta, such as the one around 5th aliyah of parshat Devarim? – DanF Aug 6 '19 at 14:34

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .