Perform a search by entering your search string in the Query input box, click the Get Concordances button, then your search results will start to be displayed. Or you can click the Refine Query button that gives you the chance to remove any unintended matches to your query. There are also a number of other search options that can be chosen.
Any of the following can be entered as queries.
run | Single word search. |
run/ran | Alternative words. Either 'run' or 'ran' will be matched. |
r[u|a]n | Alternative characters. In the first case either 'run' or 'ran' will be matched. Note that although this does the same thing as above it will be considerably slower to process. |
run* | Character wildcards. The specified string with any number of characters in the * position will be matched, e.g. matches of 'run*' are 'run', 'runs', 'running' and 'rune'. Note that the last word here may not be a desirable match, in these situations it can be useful to refine the query to eliminate unintended matches. |
[r[u|a]n*|sprint] | Any combinations of the above patterns are possible. |
fed#up | Compounds. 'fed#up' will match 'fedup', 'fed-up' and 'fed up'. |
too many cooks spoil | Phrase search. |
too many * spoil | Phrase containing a wildcard. In this case any word can appear in the * position. |
too many *3 spoil the | Phrase containing a multiple wildcard. In this case one to three words can appear in the *3 position. The maximum length of this wildcard is 9 words. |
too many * *2 spoil the | Phrase containing adjacent wildcards. In this case two to three words can appear in the * *2 position. |
cooks NEAR broth | NEAR operator. Find these two words within 10 words of each other in either direction. |
carpe diem OR seize the day | OR operator. Find different phrases with one search. |
Part-of-Speech (POS) tags can be added to queries by placing them inside curly brackets, e.g. any noun is {N*} (tagsets).
record{V*} | POS tag attached to a word. Only instances of 'record' as the specified POS type (in this case a verb) will be matched. |
[record|tape]{V*} | POS tag attached to a pattern. Each word matched by the pattern must also match the specified POS type. |
{V*} | POS tag only. Any verb will be matched in the {V*} position |
The drop down menu below the Query box lists all of the available tags for the selected corpus sub-segment. Selecting a tag from this list will add it to the Query box. Note that each language has different POS tagsets.
These options are available on the search start page and can be used to change the scope of your search:
and the refine query options.Choosing a domain from the drop down list will limit the search to that subsection of the corpus.
Ticking this will make your search case insensitive. If refining the query case variants of the search terms will be included.
Use this drop down list to choose where any matches to the query must appear within a sentence. The options are 'Any', 'Within a single sentence', 'Sentence initial' and 'Sentence final'. The default is 'Any'.
This enables you to assign words which must or must not appear within the selected range around the search string. The ranges you can select are document, sentence, left/right/both 1-30 words or within the matched string. Place a minus (-) before words which must not appear.
For example if you search for the word 'plant' you can limit your search by entering 'nuclear -flower' and selecting the document span. Only results from documents containing the word 'nuclear' but not the word 'flower' will returned.
Details about refining a query can be found here...