>Dear collegues,
>
>I would like to know if it is possible to search the BNC in order to
>find out which adverbs precede a particular verb.
>
>It doesn't seem to be possible, or at least I haven't figured out the
>way to query the database in order to retrieve this sort of information.
>
>Thank you in advance for your help,
>Gloria
With BNCweb, this can easily be done with the
help of the "sort feature". Just perform a query
for the different word-forms of your verb of your
choice (or use the lemma search feature) and sort
the result on the preceding word. Then select a
POS-tag restriction for "any adverb".
If you need simple descriptive statistics, you
can then select "frequency list" from the
relevant menu - this will display a list of
adverbs preceding the verb ordered by frequency.
Further information about BNCweb can be found at
http://homepage.mac.com/bncweb/home.html. At this
web-site you'll also find a detailed manual
describing the whole range of features of BNCweb.
Hope this helps...
Sebastian
--Sebastian Hoffmann Englisches Seminar der Univ. Zürich Plattenstrasse 47 CH-8032 Zürich Tel: +41-1-634 3551 Fax: +41-1-634 4908
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