[class="ADJ"][hw="snow|rain" & class="SUBST"] (82 matches)

[pos="AJ."][hw="snow|rain" & pos="NN."] (63 matches)

[word="going" %c][hw="to"][class="VERB"] (1583 matches)

[pos="XX0"][word="about"][word="to"] (6 matches)

The exact name of the of the value of the structural attribute is W:ac:medicine.

This query should return 61 matches in the BNC-BABY: [hw="heart"] :: match.text_genre="W:ac:medicine"

Which common constructions can be seen in the matches?

From a cursory look at the concordance, one could see that “heart failure” is common in medical texts, whereas constructions such has “her heart sank”, “her heart leaped”, “her heart dropped” seem more common in prose.

There are two ways to match past participles via pos-tags in the BNC-BABY, as the CLAWS-5 tagset differentiates between the past participle of the verbs to have VHN, to be VBN and to do VDN and the participle of “lexical verbs” VVN, i.e. all others.

Depending on whether you included the past participles of non-lexical verbs or not, you might end up with either one of the constructions.

[hw="have"][pos="VVN"] (22699 matches)

[hw="have"][pos="VVN|VHN|VBN|VDN"] (33527 matches)

To generate a frequency list of lemmas in the participle slot: count Last by word %c on match[1]

First ten entries of the frequency list of the first query:

4541    got  
808     gone  
590     seen  
477     come  
476     made  
441     taken  
391     said  
304     become  
229     given  
225     told 

First ten entries of the frequency list of the second query:

8822    been  
4541    got  
1155    had  
850     done  
808     gone  
590     seen  
477     come  
476     made  
441     taken  
391     said 

This query may have to be adjusted gradually, these are possible ways to start out:

[hw="drive"][pos="PNP|NP0"] (92 matches)

[hw="drive"][class="SUBST"][class="ADJ"] (53 matches)

The previous queries match too many sentences that aren’t instantiations of the constructions. This is a possible way to narrow it down to people in the noun slot. Note that PNP is the pos-tag for personal pronouns and NP0 is the pos-tag for proper nouns, like Michael or NHS:

[hw="drive"][pos="PNP|NP0"][class="ADJ"] (13 matches)

Which of the construction’s slots remain the same, which are variable?

The lemma drive stays the same, the host-class is adjective. Note, however, that this query would not match instantiations like “driving me bananas”.

What is the meaning of the construction?

To cause someone to “lose their mind”, as it were, to be angry or upset.

Query for venomous: [hw="venomous"][class="SUBST"] (91 matches)

First ten entries of the frequency list for venomous:

count Last by hw on match[1]

18	snake  
7 	animal  
5 	attack  
4 	bite  
3 	look  
3 	shot  
3 	spine  
2 	creature  
2 	dart  
2 	glance  

Query and first ten entries of the frequency list for toxic (956 matches):

[hw="toxic"][class="SUBST"] 

286	waste  
80	chemical  
46	substance  
45	shock  
43	effect  
28	gas  
26	fume  
16	material  
16	metal  
15	emission  

Query and first ten entries of the frequency list for poisonous (290 matches):

[hw="poisonous"][class="SUBST"] 

31	gas  
15	snake  
13	plant  
13	substance  
10	chemical  
9 	waste  
8 	animal  
7 	creature  
6 	fume  
5 	atmosphere  
4 	bite  
4 	secretion  

Compare lists. What differences do you see?

1. venoumous tends to occur with animals or animal-related words
2. toxic tends to occur with substances and inanimate objects
3. poisonous tends to occur with both substances and animals

Continue here: 6b. Queries with Repetition Operators (RegEx).