Corpus-Paul

["David Hindley" <dhindley AT compuserve.com>]

Peter,

>>The reason for doing so was to look at an old problem, the
lexical frequencies of the Pauline epistles, from a slightly new
perspective ... First, one divides the material into maximally
large chunks that will tell you something interesting about your
data set ... Then one chooses a number of authors between which
the chunks can be parceled out.  ... The "max hapax" formula is
this.  For each word, the number of occurences per 500 words is
calculated for each author.  Then the highest rate of occurence
is found.  Then, one goes through the rest of the authors, and
if that author does not have the word or has the word less than
1 time per 500 words, then, for each such author without the
word, the value of the highest rate of occurence is added to the
"hapax" score for that particular distribution of authors.

[...]

Thoughts, suggestions, criticisms, requests for source code?<<

Nice to hear you again! So, this is what you have been up to,
eh? 

I was not quite sure what you mean by "number of authors"? Could
you explain? Also, how deeply have you looked into other
attempts at analysis of style (I treat lexical analysis as a
kind of stylistic analysis)? Most NT oriented lexical studies
I've looked at do not seem terribly sophisticated (the results
are seldom reduced to ratios and even when they are the ratios
are usually not subjected to any sort of serious analysis). 

Some of the studies of style, such as that by Kenneth Neumann
(_Authenticity of the Pauline Epistles in the Light of
Stylostatistical Analysis_, Scholars Press, 1990), and Anthony
Kenny's _A Stylometric Study of the New Testament_ (Oxford U.P.,
1986), and _The Computation of Style: An Introduction to
Statistics for Students of Literature and Humanities_ (Pergamon
Press, 1982), discuss the problems associated with sampling
techniques and choosing variables. Combining more than one work
to create individual samples is probably a "no-no".
  
>>The theoretical basis for this kind of analysis--in terms of
statistics and linguistics--is probably the weak point of what I
have produced so far.  Basically, I'm not sure why my formula
"works" inasmuch as it lines up, undesignedly, with what many
scholars have been saying about the Pauline epistles for a long
time.  One thing I'd like to do is to apply this type of
procedure to a different body of texts.  The difficulty is
getting a corpora that is tagged with the lexical forms of the
words.  I made a request to B-Greek for notice of any such
corpora. If anyone here knows of one (even if it is proprietary
and may be difficult to obtain), please let me know.<<

Besides analysis of themes and dogmatic statements, lexical
studies have been one of the other major reasons why critics
group Pauline letters into "undisputed" "disputed" and
"spurious" categories. Provided your methodology is sound, you
may have just confirmed what others have already deduced.
However, uniqueness of vocabulary alone may not be enough to
tell authors apart!

Sincerely,

David Hindley
Cleveland, Ohio USA