Digital Masorah: Toward an Index of Orthographic and Morphological Variation at the Lexical Level

Abstract

This article proposes a computational method to extract orthographic and morphological variation within the boundaries of individual documents that are part of the Hebrew Bible or the Dead Sea Scrolls. In particular, it presents “profiles” of document-internal variation at the lexical level, e.g., at the level of individual words. This study a) describes the methods used to create an index of variation that can be navigated and explored in order to find meaningful patterns, and b) explores the new avenues for research such an index opens up. Whereas earlier contributions have focused on the underlying rules that affect linguistic variation, the aim of the present contribution is to create a representative sample of that variation. This sample is not at the level of individual phonemes or morphemes, but at the lexical level as there are clear indications that lexical selection played a significant role in ancient linguistic practices.