Linguistics Resources

For the following exercises, use repetition operators like *, + and {} and other regular expressions such as [] , (). Like in the previous section, you will also have to be familiar with positional attributes of the BNC. For more information how to use these operators in CQP, please see the Wiki-page on Regular Expressions (Basics).

Query post- as a hyphenated prefix attaching to adverbial bases in the BNC. Use the positional attribute word (case-insensitive) restricted to pos="AJ." How many instances do you find?

Formulate a query that matches all words that begin with in- and end with -ible in the BNC-BABY. How many instances do you find?

1. Formulate a query that matches both snowed and snowing (case-insensitive), but not snows or other word forms in a corpus of your choice.
2. Formulate another query that matches snow and slow (case-insensitive). Try to think of more than one way to do this.

Explore the types of objects that the synonymous verbs change and alter collocate with. To do so, proceed accordingly:

1. One verb at a time, query transitive usage patterns. Your query can include another word, which must be a noun, as well as up to two optional elements in between.
2. Using the command count Last by hw on matchend, export a (tidied) frequency list of the nouns in object position for each verb.
3. Finally, compare the word lists. Can you make any semantic generalisations about the objects which collocate with change and alter respectively?

Find the solutions for the exercises here: Repetition Operators – Solutions

Continue here: 6c. Working with Concordances