Towards a multidimensional linguistic database of Biblical Hebrew

Abstract

Biblical Hebrew clauses can be and have been studied from many different angles. Over the past forty years much of this knowledge has been captured in various computer software systems and databases. Having all these electronic aids for the study of the Hebrew Bible is wonderful, but also overwhelming and even frustrating, because various tools have to be used to study different layers and to get various perspectives. Therefore, systems have been suggested or are being developed to display multi-layer analyses of Hebrew clauses, integrating the various dimensions of clausal analysis in an interlinear table format on one screen. This type of interlinear table is in fact a two-dimensional subset of three- (or multi-)dimensional linguistic data structures. The knowledge that is represented by a collection of interlinear tables can be conceptualised three-dimensionally as an information cube consisting of a cluster of clauses and analyses. Such a clause cube can be implemented on a computer using a three-dimensional array, which can be called a cyber cube. Processing arrays with nested loops makes it possible to view and manipulate the stored information in an efficient way.