--- title: "Text-Fabric: handling Biblical data with IKEA — Roorda 2019" description: "Text-Fabric is the data model and Python package in which the ETCBC's annotated Hebrew Bible (BHSA) is distributed. The model is minimal: words are…" authors: ["Dirk Roorda"] year: 2019 venue: "HIPHIL Novum 5" source: "https://doi.org/10.7146/hn.v5i2.142740" doi: "10.7146/hn.v5i2.142740" licence: "HIPHIL Novum vols 1–8: free to read, no CC licence (all rights reserved to the authors) — read only" licence_url: "https://tidsskrift.dk/hiphilnovum/about" summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License" canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/hbo-2019-roorda-text-fabric-handling-biblical-data/" --- [Elamur Research](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/hbo-2019-roorda-text-fabric-handling-biblical-data/) [home](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/) / [2019](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2019/page/5/) / Text-Fabric: handling Biblical data with IKEA logistics # Text-Fabric: handling Biblical data with IKEA logistics **Authors:** [Dirk Roorda](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/dirk-roorda/) · **Year:** 2019 · **Venue:** HIPHIL Novum 5(2), 126– **Link:** [tidsskrift.dk/hiphilnovum/article/view/142740](https://tidsskrift.dk/hiphilnovum/article/view/142740) · **Licence:** copyrighted — summary only (free to read, no CC licence) **Institutions:** [Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS)](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/labs/data-archiving-and-networked-services-dans/) [**1** citations](https://openalex.org/works?filter=cites:W3016005396) OpenAlex, 2026-10-14 · [**1** citations in our library](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/hbo-2019-roorda-text-fabric-handling-biblical-data/cited-by/) of the 140884 papers whose bibliographies we read · [HIPHIL Novum 5](https://openalex.org/S5406958382) · [licence](https://tidsskrift.dk/hiphilnovum/about) - [Publisher's page](https://doi.org/10.7146/hn.v5i2.142740) - [PDF](https://tidsskrift.dk/hiphilnovum/article/download/142740/186442) - [DOI 10.7146/hn.v5i2.142740](https://doi.org/10.7146/hn.v5i2.142740) - [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W3016005396) **Authors (1)** 1. [Dirk Roorda](https://openalex.org/A5005303591) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2680-8724) · [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/2120315) · h 5 · 191 citations · 102 works Citations and author metrics: OpenAlex, 2026-10-14; authors with the same name are not always told apart. ## What it is about Text-Fabric is the data model and Python package in which the ETCBC's annotated Hebrew Bible (BHSA) is distributed. The model is minimal: words are numbered slots (426 584 in the BHSA); every larger object (phrase, clause, sentence, book, lexeme) is a node defined by its set of slots (about a million more); edges link nodes; every annotation is a feature, one file per feature, mapping nodes or edges to values. Because each feature is a separate file, different teams can add layers (syntax, another morphology, prosody) without touching each other, and a user weaves only the ones needed. Two worked jobs: printing BHSA trees with any word representation chosen at run time, and aligning the Open Scriptures morphology (OSHB, on the WLC, morpheme-split) to the BHSA's words. That comparison showed about 30 000 part-of-speech disagreements, 29 000 of them systematic and absorbed by lexeme-based exception rules, leaving about 1 000 to inspect; e.g. OSHB "verb" maps to BHSA verb in 84%, quotation verb 10%, copula 5%. ## Ideas - I1. Keep Mova's hbo layers as separate per-token columns keyed by `sent_id` + token index (trees, prag, dictionary links, accents, later prosody), so a new layer never requires regenerating the others; check that the parse database already does this and say so in chapter 13. - I2. Compare two annotations systematically, then explain the bulk by lexeme-level rules and inspect only the residue: apply to MACULA vs PTNK UPOS/relations (`macula compare`), reporting the confusion table and the share absorbed by per-lemma rules. - I3. The BHSA's "quotation verb" and "copulative verb" subclasses are a ready inventory for Mova's speech-frame verbs (אמר, דבר, קרא …) and for היה as copula; check our `SAYING` list in `prag.rs` against it. BHSA itself is CC BY-NC: use it as a measure only. ## For Mova I1 is a design note for [languages/hbo/13-mova-tools.md](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/hbo/13-mova-tools/) (FEATS/MISC, the parse database). I2 extends `macula compare` (chapter 13 §7). I3 is a check on `tools/macula/src/prag.rs` (the frame verbs) and on the copula paragraph of `08-syntax.md`. Topics: [Morphology](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/morphology/) · [Hebrew & Aramaic](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/hebrew-aramaic/) ## Cite The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. [DOI 10.7146/hn.v5i2.142740](https://doi.org/10.7146/hn.v5i2.142740) ```bibtex @inproceedings{roorda2019text, title = {{Text-Fabric: handling Biblical data with IKEA logistics}}, author = {Roorda, Dirk}, booktitle = {HIPHIL Novum 5}, year = {2019}, doi = {10.7146/hn.v5i2.142740}, url = {https://doi.org/10.7146/hn.v5i2.142740} } ``` - [← previous Semantic mapping of participants in legal discourse](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/hbo-2019-hojgaard-semantic-mapping-participants-legal-discourse/) - [next → Un corpus arboré pour le français : le French Treebank A parsed corpus for French: the French treebank](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/abeille-2019-un-corpus-arbore-pour-le/) - [↑ back to papers of 2019](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2019/page/5/) ## References 7 references, 1 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet. 1. Doedens, Crist-Jan (1994), Text Databases. One Database Model and Several Retrieval Languages, number 14 in Language and Computers, Editions Rodopi, Amsterdam, Netherlands and Atlanta, USA. ISBN: 90-5183-729-1, [http://books.google.nl/books?id=9ggOBRz1dO4C](http://books.google.nl/books?id=9ggOBRz1dO4C) . [↗](http://books.google.nl/books?id=9ggOBRz1dO4C) 2. Elliger, Karl and Wilhelm Rudolf Rudolph, editors (1997), Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, 5th corrected ed., Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, Germany. [http://www.bibelwissenschaft.de/startseite/wis-senschaftliche-bibelausgaben/biblia-hebraica/bhs/](http://www.bibelwissenschaft.de/startseite/wis-senschaftliche-bibelausgaben/biblia-hebraica/bhs/) [↗](http://www.bibelwissenschaft.de/startseite/wis-senschaftliche-bibelausgaben/biblia-hebraica/bhs/) 3. Petersen, Ulrik (2004), Emdros - a text database engine for analyzed or annotated text, Proceedings of COL-ING 2004, p. 1190–1193. [http://emdros.org/petersen-emdros-COLING-2004.pdf](http://emdros.org/petersen-emdros-COLING-2004.pdf) . [↗](http://emdros.org/petersen-emdros-COLING-2004.pdf) 4. Peursen, Wido Th. and Dirk Roorda (2015), Hebrew text database ETCBC4b. Dataset available online at Data Archiving and Networked services, Den Haag, Netherlands. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17026/dans-z6y-skyh [↗](https://doi.org/10.17026/dans-z6y-skyh) 5. Roorda, Dirk, Jan Krans, Bert-Jan Lietaert-Peerbolte, Wido Th. van Peursen, Ulrik Sandborg- Petersen, and Eep Talstra (2012), Scientific report of the workshop biblical scholarship and humanities computing: Data types, text, language and interpretation, held at the Lorentz Centre Leiden from 6 feb 2012 through 10 feb 2012, Technical report, Lorentz Center, Leiden. [http://www.lorentzcen-ter.nl/lc/web/2012/480/report.php3?wsid=480&venue=Oort](http://www.lorentzcen-ter.nl/lc/web/2012/480/report.php3?wsid=480&venue=Oort) [↗](http://www.lorentzcen-ter.nl/lc/web/2012/480/report.php3?wsid=480&venue=Oort) 6. Roorda, D. 2017. The Hebrew Bible as Data: Laboratory - Sharing - Experiences. In: Odijk J. & van Hessen A, CLARIN in the Low Countries. London: Ubiquity Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/bbi.18 [↗](https://doi.org/10.5334/bbi.18) [our card](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/hbo-2015-roorda-hebrew-bible-data-laboratory-sharing/) 7. Dirk Roorda, & Cody Kingham. (2017, October 31). ETCBC/bhsa: Many fixes. (Version v1.1.0). Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1039470 [↗](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1039470)