Getting started: finding out about a word
Without further ado, let’s jump in head first and see. We will now perform some searches and see what a concordance is, and what concordancers look like.
Note: if you click on this link, Cobuild, you will open the CCS in this window, leaving this one.
There are two alternatives:
(a) using the right mouse button, choose to open the link in a new window, or
(b) Ctrl N will open another window and you can click on the link.
At the bottom of the screen you have the navigation buttons that take you from one window to another.
The Cobuild link is to this address: http://www.collins.co.uk/Corpus/CorpusSearch.aspx
Search One
Is whose used with animate and inanimate antecedents.
Type the word whose into the box and click Show concs. The search word is referred to as the node. And the format in which the search results are displayed is referred to as KWIC, which stands for Key Word In Context.
So, do we say, I saw a car whose owner … ?
Search Two
Type the word step into the box and click Show concs.
What do you notice about the order of the first words to the right of the node?
Correct! They are in alphabetical order, with numbers, punctuation and codes (e.g. [f]) at the top. In this concordancer sampler, this is the only possible order to view the concordances in. In other programs, sorting by the first word to the left is one of a number of possible sort options. Each sort reveals different information.
Observation: does the node appear with its declensions or conjugations? See Morphology.
What do the forty lines of step tell you about the word? What properties of this word can you observe?
· a verb (finite or infinite or both?)
· in a phrasal verb construction
· in a delexical verb construction
· as a noun – with different meanings (polysemy)
· as part of a compound noun
· common words following it
· commons words preceding it
· in fixed phrases
· in a metaphorical sense
All of this can be demonstrated with this simplest of searches with only forty lines. By this stage you might be wondering what a word is. Click this link for an introduction to the quandary.
Search Three
We might expect that X proves Y in a legal or scientific sense. What evidence do you find for that assumption? Type in prove or proves and click Show concs. Read the contexts observing the sorts of things than can be X (the subject) and Y (the object).
Search Four
Can you pretend something, i.e. a noun or a noun phrase? Can pretend be followed by “-ing” forms, infinitives with or without “to”, “wh-” clauses, “that” clauses, or anything else?
To find out which of these complementation patterns pretend has, type pretend into the box and click Show concs.
What do you notice about this verb when displayed in the KWIC format?
And what mostly precedes it? Modals, auxiliaries and “to”. This is because the word form pretend is uninflected. The full lemma is pretend, pretends, pretended, pretending.
Consider why this information is useful?
Search Five
Question: what parts of speech (POS) can fast function as?
Type the word fast into the box.
Can you say which lines exemplify which POS and how many of each?
FAST |
line numbers |
totals |
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Noun |
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Verb |
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Adjective |
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Adverb |
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This is indicative of the random sampling.
Search Six
Question: Many present participles (-ing forms) are used adjectivally. Is this true of pretending? If so, attributively and predicatively? These are important questions when studying vocabulary.
So far, we have been generating concordances for base (uninflected) forms. But if you want to search for pretending only, type in precisely that. It appears in verb groups (e.g. present continuous) and as an adjective. In Session 4, we will see how to focus such a search.
Search Seven
Comparing how we use singular and plural forms of nouns can be instructive. Try a search on hand and another on hands. What do you notice about the different usage?
Search Eight
If you haven’t already encountered problems using capital letters, try searching for the BBC. Is it possible that there is no mention of the BBC in a corpus of 56 million words? No. It only works if you use lower case letters, i.e. bbc. Similarly, People, is not a valid search, whereas people is, and the results include People.
Search Nine
Try typing in a number and searching. No luck? You have to use a backslash before the number, e.g. \1970 or \12.
Closing comment: it cannot be denied that the language which appears when corpora are searched is noticeably richer than composed, edited or carefully selected examples, for inclusion in textbooks and dictionaries. This richness is an important factor in learner input.