--- title: "Approaching the mountain of Exodus 19: thou shalt explore syntax first — Talstra 2016" description: "A design report on adding participant tracking to the ETCBC database, worked through Exodus 19… Cited by 2 papers here." authors: ["Eep Talstra"] year: 2016 venue: "HIPHIL Novum 3" source: "https://doi.org/10.7146/hn.v3i1.142160" doi: "10.7146/hn.v3i1.142160" 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/talstra-2016-approaching-mountain-exodus-19-thou/" --- [Elamur Research](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/talstra-2016-approaching-mountain-exodus-19-thou/) [home](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/) / [2016](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2016/page/4/) / Approaching the mountain of Exodus 19: thou shalt explore syntax first # Approaching the mountain of Exodus 19: thou shalt explore syntax first **Authors:** Eep Talstra · **Year:** 2016 · **Venue:** HIPHIL Novum 3 (1), 2–24 **Link:** [hiphil.org](http://hiphil.org) ([tidsskrift.dk/hiphilnovum](https://tidsskrift.dk/hiphilnovum)) · **Licence:** free to read, no CC licence (vols 1–8) — copyrighted, summary only [**1** citations](https://openalex.org/works?filter=cites:W2754088639) OpenAlex, 2026-10-14 · [**2** citations in our library](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/talstra-2016-approaching-mountain-exodus-19-thou/cited-by/) of the 140,884 papers whose bibliographies we read · [HIPHIL Novum 3](https://openalex.org/S5406958382) · [licence](https://tidsskrift.dk/hiphilnovum/about) - [Publisher's page](https://doi.org/10.7146/hn.v3i1.142160) - [PDF](https://tidsskrift.dk/hiphilnovum/article/download/142160/185851) - [DOI 10.7146/hn.v3i1.142160](https://doi.org/10.7146/hn.v3i1.142160) - [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W2754088639) **Authors (1)** 1. [Eep Talstra](https://openalex.org/A5052458753) [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/2737902) · h 5 · 126 citations · 200 works Citations and author metrics: OpenAlex, 2026-10-14; authors with the same name are not always told apart. ## What it is about A design report on adding participant tracking to the ETCBC database, worked through Exodus 19 (God, Moses, the people, the priests, the mountain). The problem: one actor appears as יְהוָה, הָאֱלֹהִים, "I" and "you"; the people as בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל, יִשְׂרָאֵל, בֵּית יַעֲקֹב, הָעָם, "you" and "we"; a singular collective (הָעָם) takes plural verbs; and in 19:4–6 Moses speaks God's words, so the quote's "I" is God, not the announced speaker. Talstra's procedure, bottom-up from the existing clause and domain hierarchy (narrative N, quote NQ, quote within quote NQQ): (1) collect every phrase marked for person, number, gender as a referent candidate; (2) link them by morphology, subject–predicate agreement and identical lexemes; (3) group them into sets per text domain; (4) at each domain border, equate the speaker and audience of the verb of saying with the 1st and 2nd persons of the quote; (5) link remaining 3rd-person sets across domains by lexeme; (6) merge into text-level actors; (7) merge actors with different names interactively (YHWH + Elohim → God); (8) relate part-of actors (the mountain, the top of the mountain). Machine proposals need human correction; the output also serves to check translations. ## Ideas - I2. A prophetic-relay exception: when the quote is introduced by "thus you shall say" (כֹּה תֹאמַר) or the speaker relays God's words, the inner "I" is God; test on the Torah's "speak to the children of Israel and say to them" frames. - I3. A small alias table of actors for the Torah (YHWH/Elohim; Israel/children of Israel/house of Jacob/the people; Moses/"the man"), written as data, applied after the grammatical steps, so the dictionary's names and the world share one actor id. - I4. Collective nouns (עָם, עֵדָה, קָהָל) with plural agreement: accept number mismatch for a known list in the agreement checks, and count how often the Torah switches singular/plural with the same subject. ## For Mova - I1. Implement steps 1–6 over our trees and `prag`'s speech cuts: every quote gets a sender and addressee taken from the frame's subject and its אֶל/לְ complement; 1st/2nd persons in the quote are linked to them; nested quotes (NQQ) get their own pair. Report the share of 1st/2nd-person forms that get an actor. I1–I2 extend the speech carrying of `tools/macula/src/prag.rs` (voice, frame and quote) towards participant tracking, written up in [languages/hbo/09-discourse.md](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/hbo/09-discourse/) (participant tracking, direct speech). I3 links the names section of `10-lexicon.md`, the Torah dictionary and the world. I4 belongs in `08-syntax.md` (agreement) and the converter's checks in `tools/macula`. ## Institutions [🎓**Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam** Amsterdam · Netherlands 31 works · 3,248 citations](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/vrije-universiteit-amsterdam/) Topics[Syntax & grammar formalisms](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/syntax-grammar/) ## Cite Cite as Eep Talstra. 2016. Approaching the mountain of Exodus 19: thou shalt explore syntax first. HIPHIL Novum 3. The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. [DOI 10.7146/hn.v3i1.142160](https://doi.org/10.7146/hn.v3i1.142160) ```bibtex @inproceedings{talstra2016approaching, title = {{Approaching the mountain of Exodus 19: thou shalt explore syntax first}}, author = {Eep Talstra}, booktitle = {HIPHIL Novum 3}, year = {2016}, doi = {10.7146/hn.v3i1.142160}, url = {https://doi.org/10.7146/hn.v3i1.142160} } ``` - [← previous Applying the Cognitive Machine Translation Evaluation Approach to Arabic](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/temnikova-2016-applying-cognitive-machine-translation-evaluation/) - [next → Compilation of an Arabic Children's Corpus](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/sulaiti-2016-compilation-arabic-children-s-corpus/) - [↑ back to papers of 2016](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2016/page/4/)