Appendix 7: Greek tag system

The tag system used for Greek is that of the Analytical Greek New Testament (Friberg and Friberg 1981a). The tags are coded according to the table shown below, adapted from that source. Friberg and Friberg (1981b) provide some additional information about the tagging method and procedures, though their account also contains some errors, such as asserting (p. 35) that “up to 20 percent of the forms were ambiguous,” when the actual total is nearer 40%.

As already discussed, the tags often include unusual information, generally conjoined to the fundmental tag via “+,” “&,” “/,” or other symbols, representing various relations. A tag is a string of letters; the first indicates major category, and the rest indicates subcategories.

In the following charts, the upper-case letters are those used in the tags to abbreviate the category names. All slots (represented by successive columns) for the particular major category of each word (shown in the first column) are always filled; inapplicable slots (e.g., case for non-participial verbs) are filled by a dash unless no applicable slots follow. For example, an accusative neuter singular noun would be tagged N-AN-S. The first hyphen indicates that the word is not a pronoun, and the second indicates that (consequently) the word is not marked for person.

Major cat'y	Subcategories...
Adjective	Pronominal	Cardinal	Nominative	Masculine	X=1st person	Singular
	adverB	Ordinal	Genitive	Feminine	Y=2nd	Plural
	--	Relative	Dative	Neuter	--
		Indefinite	Accusative	--
		inTerrogative	Vocative
		Demonstrative
		coMparative
		Superlative
		--
Conjunction	Subordinating
	Coordinating
	Hyperordinating
Determiner	Nominative	Masculine	Singular
	Genitive	Feminine	Plural
	Dative	Neuter
	Accusative
	Vocative
Noun	Pronoun	Nominative	Masculine	X=1st person	Singular
	--	Genitive	Feminine	Y=2nd	Plural
		Dative	Neuter	Z=3rd
		Accusative	--	--
		Vocative
Preposition	Genitive
	Dative
	Accusative
Q=particle	Sentential
	inTerrogative
	Verbal
Verb	Indicative	Present	Active	Nominative	Masculine	X=1st	Singular
	Subjunctive	Imperfect	Middle	Genitive	Feminine	Y=2nd	Plural
	Optative	Future	Passive	Dative	Neuter	Z=3rd	--
	iMperative	Aorist	Either m/p	Accusative	--	--
	iNfinitive	peRfect		Vocative
	Participle	pLuperfect	m Deponent	--
	paRticiple, imper. sense		p depOnent
			m/p depoNent

The very observant reader may notice that the table of tag frequencies (in Appendix 8) includes one occurrence of the tag “T.” This is apparently an error in the original tagged text.