The Hebrew Language Historical Dictionary

MA'AGARIM
The Hebrew Language Historical Dictionary Project

Introduction.

The Historical Dictionary Project (HDP) is the research arm of the Academy of the Hebrew Language. It aims to encompass the entire Hebrew lexicon throughout its history; that is, to present every Hebrew word in its morphological, semantical, and contextual development from its first appearance in written texts to the present. The present CD-ROM covers the ancient period from 200 B.C.E. to 425 C. E. (The fulllist of sources can be accessed fromt e CD-ROM). The search program that is integrated into this database allows for access to the information in a variety of ways; for example, to extract a list of all verbal forms of a single root in a chosen stem and chosen tense, or a list of all nouns in a specific declension, etc. Also the user can extract the actual forms he is interested in from a specific work or works, or from the entire database.

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Getting Starting.

Ask a LETRS consultant to guide you to the WINDOWS95 machine and to load the appropriate CD-ROM as well as the hardware lock. From the START button, go to ELECTRONIC TEXTS, then select The Historical Dictionary Project (written in Hebrew).

As soon as the program starts, you will see a window that resembles the navigation window of many web browsers.

The menu options are all in Hebrew; the English equivalents are given in the image below.

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Browsing and Searching the Database.

The buttons that appear on the search bar located at the top of the Maagarim navigator allow you to start browsing the collection using a number of criteria. The image below details the English equivalents of the Hebrew items on the navigation bar. Following the image is a brief description of the function performed by each button (in order from right to left):

NEW: Clicking this icon opens a new search window on top of the active window. Up to four windows may be opened simultaneously. The windows are layered and only the top one is active.

SOURCES: Click this icon to display information on the texts in the database: author, date, literary genre, the conventional division of each source, the best textual transmissions and their sigia, editions, and publication information.

TEXT Click this icon to display a given text (linguistic witness) from the database. The classification of the texts is the same as in SOURCES. Sources may be accessed from their beginning or from a selected reference. The selected text is divided into sections. A red reference marker heads each section of text. It displays the text's date, abbreviated name, source reference, and transmission. (Additional data on the texts can be accessed in SOURCES. Click the SOURCES icon while the cursor is in a text screen. This opens the list of sources. Double-click the source name to display information on the text.

Tip: To display the lexical entry for any word in a text, select it. The selected word's lemma and its root appear in the status bar at the bottom of the window. See example below:

If the word belongs to two lexical entries, the first entry will be followed by an ellipsis (...). Move the pointer to the ellipsis to open a box displaying both entries. In order to display all the contexts for a specific lemma, click the SWITCH TO icon. You can also use the NEXT and PREVIOUS icons to move forward and backward between sections.

LEMMATA or Lexical Entries: Click the LEMMATA icon to call up lexical data by: root, lemma, word from a text, form in inverse order of letters, vocalization, or special category (proper names, Aramaic, Greek, or Latin words, etc.).

REFINE: Click this icon to limit the scope of the corpus being reviewed to retrieve the contexts for a specific lemma: by composition, author, period, or genre.

Word STRINGS: This icon allows you to to retrieve more than one lemmata in the same section.

PREVIOUS: Clicking this icon enables you to move to a previous item: the context that precedes the first one listed in the Search window, the section of text that precedes the one displayed in the Search window, or to a previous item in the lemmata or forms lists.

NEXT Clicking this icon enables you to move to the next item: the context that follows the last one listed, the section of text that follows the one displayed in the Search window, or the next listed lemmata or form.

SYMBOLS: Click this icon for an explanation of the symbols used to annotate the text. A full list of annotations is also available.

Fianally, with the retreival of each entry in Ma'agarim, you always have the options for restricting the display based on various creteria, saving your criteria for future use as search parameters and setting bookmarks at different stages of your work. Please refer to the English or Hebrew manulas for information on these functions and more.

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Handling the results.

Unfortunately, the Ma'agarim program does not offer any option for the export of results to your searches. Copying is not allowed, and saving (except for saving search criteria) and printing are simply not available. It may be possible to take screen shots of the windows displaying your results, one at a time. This strategy is not practical however when a large volume of data is involved. Therefore, it is recommended that you have handy some notepads to write down your output from Ma'agarim.

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Last Updated: 10/27/99 URL: http://www.indiana.edu/~letrs/index.html Comments: Library Electronic Text Resource Service / LETRS@indiana.edu. Indiana University