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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.

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    quantifiedcantillation.nl h/t @msh210 chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/26457249#26457249
    – Double AA ♦
    Feb 9, 2016 at 18:57
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    @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, 2016 at 19:02
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    Beware it has some unusual variants in its underlying text, so take any results with a +/- 2 or so.
    – Double AA ♦
    Feb 9, 2016 at 19:03
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    @DoubleAA wow this is such a great find at so many levels; this should be an answer and not a comment :)
    – RonP
    Feb 9, 2016 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, 2016 at 13:21

2 Answers 2

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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 :)

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    Thanks Noleli! Welcome to Mi Yodeya :) Looking forward to seeing all of Tanakh up on your site soon
    – Double AA ♦
    Feb 11, 2016 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, 2016 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, 2016 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, 2016 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, 2019 at 14:34
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In addition to the excellent, quick and intuitive https://quantifiedcantillation.nl/ mentioned above we can add two additional resources to the mix. They let one search all of Tanach for trop patterns as part of their general Tanach searches. This includes the special טעמי המקרא system for the ספרי אמ"ת.

1) The veteran מקראות גדולות הכתר application (their desktop app תכנית הכתר is much more robust than their web app but I don't think it's compatible with Windows 10) - here one can search trop patterns that include up to three words in addition to OR conditions. To search raw trop patterns here regardless of words, just assign the trop character to a single-letter wildcard (?) and surround that wildcard with an * (asterisk) wildcard before and after.

2) My own Base Hasefer (https://basehasefer.com) - it allows one to search for trop patterns of unlimited length. It allows for searching exact trop patterns as long as there's no repeating trop. There are multiple ways to accomplish trop searches:

  • Simple search: A brief tutorial of this capability can be viewed (the duration of that section is about 90 seconds). While one can use the virtual keyboard popup to merely enter טעם characters separated by spaces for the searches, it is recommended to use any letter (eg. alef) as a placeholder along with the trop character to make the trop more visible. If one only wants to search by trop regardless of words, one must make sure in the settings bar that the טעמים button is selected and the אותיות\נקודות buttons are deselected in the search settings panel.
  • Advanced search: this can even simulate per word OR conditions for the trop by using the Nikud/Taamaim tab to select multiple trop from the טעם dropdown. Best used if the אותיות button is the only one selected in the search settings panel.
  • Pasuk settings: use this tab within the Advanced Search as a quick way to find whole pesukim based on selecting a list of trop they must contain and a list of trop they must not contain (eg. all pesukim without אתנחתא).

One final nice trop feature there is the Taam Parser which for every single pasuk in Tanach, breaks down the syntax of the words into a visual and interactive tree structure according to the rules set forth in Rav Breuer's ספר טעמי המקרא.

While the Taam Parser is very quick and intuitive, the search UI mentioned earlier can admittedly be tricky and sometimes sluggish, especially for longer trop patterns. In addition to the occasional inaccuracies, I hope to improve on all of this in the future.

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