Structural Lexicology and the Greek New Testament

I have added Todd Price’s Structural Lexicology and the Greek New Testament: Applying Corpus Linguistics for Word Sense Possibility Delimitation Using Collocational Indicators to the bibliography.

The book was published in 2015 by Gorgias Press and sells for $180 at Amazon.com.

I do not own a copy of the book (due to the price!), but here’s what I’ve gleaned from the abstract provided by the publisher and available in the Library of Congress online catalog. If you own a copy of the book, feel free to tell me how far off I am!

ToddPriceBook

Price’s book addresses both lexical meaning and phrase-level meaning in context. After introducing the concept of structural lexicology as developed through the use of computational linguistics, computational lexicography and corpus linguistics, Price explains his method for determining the contextual meaning of New Testament Greek words and phrases through an analysis of their collocations (with what other words does word x tend to appear?), colligations (in its various contexts, with what kinds of words does word x tend to hold grammatical relationships?) and semantic preferences (with what words does word x share key elements of meaning?). His approach emphasizes defining words in context by disambiguating their possible meanings.

He argues, uncontroversially, that an analysis of large (digital) corpora of Hellenistic Greek can advance our understanding of lexical semantics, and he includes numerous case studies in the Greek New Testament applying his method to exegetically problematic texts.

3 Replies to “Structural Lexicology and the Greek New Testament”

  1. Due to the prohibitive price I won’t be getting the full copy for a while either, but I did message Price and obtain his methodology chapter, and am currently reading through it. I’ve only just started, but I’ll let you know if anything sticks out.

  2. Thank you for including my book in your bibliography. I appreciate it very much!

    I am embarrassed and frustrated by the price of the book as well (no pun intended)! I receive no royalties whatsoever, it costs me 108 USD to buy my own copies personally, and according to the contract, I am not allowed to give away the content. My apologies, as I do desire that this message be spread far and wide. And as a faith missionary, Bible translator, who raises my own funds, I am not in a position to purchase and distribute my own book. My prayer is that, Lord willing, it will be released eventually in an affordable paperback, or that my schedule would allow me to release an less technical version for a wider audience.

    Todd L. Price, PhD
    Budapest, Hungary
    Pioneers (Roma Bible Translation Team Coordinator)
    Roma Bible Society (Translation & Training Coordinator)
    unfoldingWord (Project Coordinator for UGNT/UGL/UGP)
    http://www.toddlprice.com

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