Level 3 analysis assumes that the student is readily familiar with the determining aspects of the part of speech being examined so that those characteristics and properties will be sharply in focus from beginning to end for her/his study. In other words, as soon as a target word is selected for analysis, the student begins the process of identifying the key attributes of the word in context that will reveal its meaning in that context. These are the very first steps in lexical analysis covered in Level 1.
For verbs, those key attributes will be tense, voice, person, number, and an awareness of mood/aspect. The student is not expected to know the finer details of mood, such as subjunctive and optative in Greek, without formal training, but she/he will be aware that those terms will be encountered in her/his study. For nouns, the student will identify sentence function, gender (from the interlinear), number, and be ready to read about case (nominative, accusative, genitive, and so on). Other parts of speech will follow suit.
The first task of the student in Level 3 analysis, therefore, is to set up the grammatical identifiers that will be used to control her/his study. Having practiced the process of lexical analysis several times, the student is then ready to proceed. The goal is not to take short cuts and save time; the goal remains the same as always: discover the meaning of the target word in context, understanding its meaning and nuances, and being able to form a sound conclusion based on usage and the contextual intent of the biblical author. The process will surely take less time at this stage, but again, that is not the primary goal. The following templates will be very similar, but there are some significant differences to note, depending on the part of speech being analyzed. The student is encouraged to use these sets of questions as minimal considerations to think through as the target word is being analyzed.
Article: Logic and Propositional Relationships – for use with Analyzing Prepositions
For a general discussion of the Levels of Lexical Analysis, click here.