Plain and CQP Search Strings
SEARCH PLAIN CQP SYNTAX ONLY
contracted form isn't is n't(word space before n't) "is" "n't"(word space before n't)
genitive form boy's boy 's(word space before 's) "boy" "'s"(word space before 's)
comma included, or optional
In this study(,) we		 In this study , we
In this study ,? we		 "In""this""study""," "we"
"In""this""study"","? "we"
all inflected forms of breakv (default attribute 'lemma') [lemma="break"]
déjà vu with and without diacritics d.j. vu "deja" %d "vu"
take metacharacters literally \? "?" %l
thank upper|lower case (T|t)hank
-or tick 'lemma';use with care		 "thank" %c
word w/|w/o certain letters favou?rite
walks?, walk(ed)?		 "favou?rite"
"walks?" "walk(ed)?"
specific POS: design as a verb: design/VV.* [word="design" & pos="V.*"]
all words ending in -ly which are adjectives .*ly/JJ [word=".*ly" &pos="JJ"]
words ending in -ly followed by a noun .*ly [pos="N*"] ".*ly" [pos="N*"]
POS of adjacent word: confused
followed by a preposition or a common noun:		 confused /(IN|NN.*) or
confused [pos="IN"|pos="NN.*"] 		"confused" [pos="IN"|pos="NN.*"] or
"confused*" [pos="IN|PP"]
all occurrences of cool except the noun (no negative conditions) [word="cool" & pos!="N.*"]
sentence beginning with
coord.conj. (conjunctive adv) 		/SENT /CC
[pos="SENT"] [pos="CC"]		 <s>[pos="CC"]or
[pos="SENT"] [pos="CC"]
sentences ending with preps /IN /SENT [pos="IN"][pos="SENT"]
optional word between words piqued (.)* interest "piqued" []? "interest"
repeated [] for indef. range between (not reliable) "no" "doubt" []* "that"
restricted open interval
throw ... particle		 — (range: 3 to right)
throw []{0,3} [pos="RP"]
do not let interval
include <s> boundary		 — "no" "doubt"[]* "that" within s

NOTE: The cqp used in Intellitext does not respond to the [] matchall, but does respond to the regex [word !="\W"] (i.e. not a non-word) or [word="\w"] (i.e, "any word"). Both also work in this cwb version of cqp.

Some examples of queries in CQP

("CQP syntax only" is ticked)

  1. a word beginning with confuse, followed by a preposition or a personal pronoun:
    "confuse.*" [pos="IN" | pos="PP"];
    or
    "confuse.*" ([pos="IN"] | [pos="PP"]);
    or
    "confuse.*" [pos="IN|PP"];
    (all three cases are handled at a different level of evaluation: the first at the level of boolean expressions, the second at the level of attribute expressions, and the third at the level of regular expressions over the character alphabet)
  2. the same, but with at most 10 words in between:
    "confuse.*" []{0,10} [pos="IN" | pos="PP"];
  3. the same, but without full stops in between:
    "confuse.*" [word!="\."]{0,10} [pos="IN" | pos="PP"];
    (you need to use the backslash to escape the dot, otherwise it will be treated as the matchall symbol of the regular expressions at the level of strings. If the backslash is omitted, all one-character words are excluded)
  4. a sequence of an adjective, a noun, a conjunction and another noun:
    [pos="JJ.*"] [pos="N.*"] "and|or" [pos="N.*"];
    (takes some time to compute)
  5. a noun, followed by either is or was, followed by a verb ending in ed:
    [pos="N.*"] "is|was" [pos="V.*" & word=".*ed"];
  6. similar, but is or was followed by a past participle (which is described by a special POS tag):
    [pos="N.*"] "is|was" [pos="VVN"];
  7. catch or caught, followed by a determiner, any number of adjectives and a noun, or
    a noun, followed by was or were, followed by caught:
    "catch|caught" [pos="DT"] [pos="JJ"]* [pos="N.*"] | [pos="N.*"] "was|were" "caught";
    (due to the truncation to 15 concordance lines in this demo version, you will only get results matching the first disjunct of this query)
  8. look or bring, followed by either up or down with at most 10 non-verbs in between:
    "look|bring" [pos != "VV.*"]{0,10} "up|down";
  9. as/so far as Noun ... is/are\was/were concerned
    "as|so"[word="far"] [word="as"][pos="N.*"]{1,3}[lemma="be"][word="concerned"]
  10. already following anything but have or be
    [!(lemma="have" |lemma="be")][word="already"]

Troubling parsings are pulled up: "not" "that" [pos="JJ.*"] ("of")? "a" [pos="NN.*"]

Here also: "as|so" "far" "as" [pos="N.*"]{1,3}[lemma="be"] "concerned"

"not" [pos="RB.*" & word!="too"] [pos="JJ.*" ] ("of")? "a" [pos="NN.*"]
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