Copyright: MonoConc Pro Help


CONTEXT

Context of concordance line

Context window

Context window size

Copy to Clipboard

CORPUS

Loading a Corpus

Changing the Corpus

Viewing and Displaying the Corpus

DISPLAY

Conceal Hits

Show Full Sentence

Suppress Tags

Word Count

Word Wrap

Cascade Versus Tiling

Size of the Window

FREQUENCY

Advanced Collocation

Collocation Frequency

Corpus frequency

Stop List

Printing Corpus Frequency Results

SAVING

Saving Collocate Frequency Results

Saving Concordance Results

Saving Corpus Frequency Results

SEARCHING

Search

Advanced Search

Heading Search

Context Search

Search Options

Word Delimiters

Wildcard Characters

SORTING

Sorting

LANGUAGE

Language

TAGS

Tag Settings

Collect Tag Info

MENU

Shortcuts


CONTEXT


Context of concordance line

To change the context size for each line, select SEARCH OPTIONS in CONCORDANCE menu and enter an appropriate number in the CONTEXT CHARACTERS box.


Context window

To view the larger context (i.e., a number of lines preceding and following the search word) for any concordance line, simply select the line by clicking on it. The larger context is then displayed in the context window which lies directly above the concordance lines.


Context window size

The context window can be expanded or shrunk relative to the concordance window by moving the boundary between the two windows in the appropriate direction.


Copy to Clipboard

Text from the concordance window or the context window (or a corpus file) can be copied to the clipboard and then pasted into another document. To copy text, select the text and enter CTRL-C.


CORPUS


Loading a Corpus

Choosing LOAD CORPUS from the FILE menu (or ALT-F L or CTRL-L). The contents of the current directory are displayed and different directories/drives can be accessed in the usual Windows manner. Some control over the display of file names is accomplished by entering a combination of letters and * in the FILE NAME text box. There are two choices under the heading FILES OF TYPE that control the file names appearing in the dialogue box: they are ALL FILES (*.*) and TEXT FILES (*.TXT).

Use the mouse to click on a file to select it, or use shift and click (or Ctrl-A) to select several files. Clicking on the Open button or pressing enter loads the selected files into the program, making them available for searching.


Changing the Corpus

New files can be added to the existing corpus by using the LOAD CORPUS command from the FILE menu. Existing files can be removed in two ways. If all the files are to be removed, choose UNLOAD CORPUS from the FILE menu. If selected files are to be removed, enter CTRL-V or go to the FILE menu and choose VIEW CORPUS FILE. A dialogue box appears in which all the loaded files are listed. Select one or more files and click on the REMOVE button.


Viewing and Displaying the Corpus

Any of the files loaded can be viewed by choosing VIEW CORPUS FILE from the FILE menu (or CTRL-V). This command brings up a window which lists the files that are loaded. Selecting one or more files from the list and clicking the SHOW button will open a scrolling window that displays the contents of each file.

If the text in the corpus window is oddly displayed with each paragraph taking up only one line (with the result that the text extends past the right edge of the window), then simply select the WORD WRAP option from the CORPUS TEXT menu.


DISPLAY


Conceal Hits

The search word in the concordance results can be replaced by a line. This feature is useful for teachers who wish to prepare exercise materials for students. The context window is minimised when CONCEAL HITS is selected. CONCEAL HITS is also available as an option when saving the concordance results to a file.


Show Full Sentence

The Keyword In Context format of the concordance results can be replaced by sentences on choosing the SHOW FULL SENTENCE alternative. The sentence delimiters are listed in SHOW FULL SENTENCE OPTIONS and exceptions such as "Dr." can be entered as EXCEPTIONS in the SHOW FULL SENTENCE OPTIONS dialogue box.


Suppress Tags

The tags (identified by the content of TAG START and TAG STOP in TAG SETTINGS) in the concordance results are hidden when SUPPRESS TAGS is chosen.


Word Count

Once COLLECT TAG INFO has been run, the total number of words in the corpus is displayed in the lower right of the window. If the definition of a word is changed (see Word Delimiters), then the word count will be replaced by an indication in K or MB of the size of the corpus .


Word Wrap

Wraps the lines so that all the text can be seen. It is only effective when SHOW FULL SENTENCE is selected.


Cascade Versus Tiling

New windows can be arranged in two ways: overlapping (cascading) or non-overlapping (tiling). The choice is controlled by the Cascade versus Tiling option in the WINDOW menu.


Size of the Window

The total size of the window can be changed by minimising or maximising it (using the window menu or arrow icons) or by dragging the edges to whatever size is appropriate.


FREQUENCY


Advanced Collocation

ADVANCED COLLOCATION contains two ways of extracting collocations based on the search word. In the first method the program calculates the frequency of three or four word collocations based on the word positions (3L, 2L, 1L, Search Term, 1R, 2R, 3R) specified by the user. The second method is CUSTOMISED COLLOCATION, which allows the user to enter a greater number of positions. Entering, for example, 3L-3R produces a frequency list of 7-word collocations.


Collocation Frequency

Choosing COLLOCATE FREQUENCY DATA from the COLLOCATION menu, or entering CTRL-F displays the collocates of the keyword ranked in terms of frequency. The data is organised in four columns, with one column for each position surrounding the keyword: 2nd left, 1st left, 1st right and 2nd right. The contents and size of the display is controlled by settings in FREQUENCY OPTIONS such as MAXIMUM LINES and MINIMUM FREQUENCY. Other preferences such as case sensitivity are controlled by settings in FREQUENCY OPTIONS. The collocation frequency calculations are tied to a particular search word and so the frequency menu appears only once a search has been performed.


Corpus Frequency

To produce a word list for the corpus, select CORPUS FREQUENCY DATA from the COLLOCATION menu and choose either frequency order or alphabetical order. The contents and size of the display is controlled by settings in FREQUENCY OPTIONS such as MAXIMUM LINES, MINIMUM FREQUENCY, MAXIMUM FREQUENCY and case sensitivity. STOP LIST OPTIONS are also a part of FREQUENCY OPTIONS. Words entered in the Stop List are excluded from the frequency data. Choosing BATCH FREQUENCY allows the corpus frequency data to written directly to a file.


Stop List

It is sometimes desirable to exclude certain words, such as function words, from being included in frequency counts. There are two ways to exclude a list of words from consideration. One option is to create and load a text-only file. The second is to add words to the exclusion list from within the program. Both these functions are accessed via FREQUENCY OPTIONS. Select CONTENT WORDS ONLY and then choose EDIT to add words or load a file of words to exclude from the frequency counts. (The words should be listed one to a line in the file.)


Printing Corpus Frequency Results

To print the corpus frequency results, select PRINT from the COLLOCATION menu when the corpus frequency window is active.


SAVING


Saving Collocate Frequency Results

The output from the collocate frequency analysis can be saved to a file by choosing SAVE AS FILE from the COLLOCATION menu when the collocate frequency window is active.


Saving Concordance Results

To save the contents of the concordance window, select SAVE FILE AS from the CONCORDANCE menu. Checking the box SHOW FILE NAMES ON EACH LINE causes each concordance line to be saved with a preceding filename, which indicates the file that the particular concordance line is associated with. The CONCEAL HITS option causes the search term to be replaced by a dashed-line in the saved file.


Saving Corpus Frequency Results

The output from the corpus frequency analysis can be saved to a file by choosing SAVE AS FILE from the COLLOCATION menu when the corpus frequency window is active.


SEARCHING


Search

Select SEARCH from the CONCORDANCE menu (CTRL-S) and type the term to be searched for and click on OK (or press enter). The search term may be a word or phrase (or part of a word, e.g., *dence). The behaviour of the search is determined by the settings in SEARCH OPTIONS. See also Wildcards and Word Delimiters.


Advanced Search

Selecting ADVANCED SEARCH from the CONCORDANCE menu (CTRL-A) or clicking on the ADVANCED button in the simple SEARCH brings up a dialogue box with a variety of search options. The top textbox is the same as in the basic SEARCH, and directly under it is a checkbox for the HEADING SEARCH command. In the middle of the dialogue box is a checkbox for the CONTEXT SEARCH option.

The following checkboxes are also present:

IGNORE CASE OF LETTERS. The difference between A and a is ignored.

USE SKIPPING AND EQUAL CHARACTERS. Characters listed as Skipping Characters are ignored in the search. If = is a skipping character, then a search for "allow" will find instances of allow and also all=ow. Characters can also be set as equal. Thus if a=o, then a search for "cat" will find cat and cot. It is possible to enter several sets of equal characters: a=o;d=t.

REGULAR EXPRESSIONS. The search uses a regular expression syntax: #sp[eo][a]?k. The # stands for a space.

SENTENCE MODE. If more than one word is specified, then all the words must occur within the same sentence.

APPEND SEARCH. This adds the results of the concordance search to those of a previous search.

BATCH SEARCH. Allows multiple items to be searched at once---each item is separated by commas or listed on a separate line in the EDIT PATTERNS textbox. These search patterns can be loaded/saved. If SAVE TO FILE is selected, then the results are not displayed, but are written directly to a file.


Heading Search

The HEADING SEARCH command allows the user to search a subset of texts in the corpus based on the content of the header. For this command to be useful, the corpus must consist of a header, delimited by <head> and </head> for example, and a text body, identified by <body> and </body> for example. If the corpus is organised as a series of headers and texts, then it is possible to search for a string in the header, and if that string occurs to then search the corresponding text for the search term specified in the main search dialogue box. Clicking on the EDIT button allows the user to enter the identifiers for the start and end of the header and the start and end of the text body.


Context Search

When the CONTEXT SEARCH checkbox is selected, a left and right context for the search term can be entered.


Search Options

This item controls various aspects of the search: MAX SEARCH HITS (the maximum number of concordance lines); the FREQUENCY OF HITS (e.g., the concordance results show only every 5th occurrence of the search string), the number of CONTEXT CHARACTERS. Range of words: It is possible to search for word A followed by word B within a certain range of words using the wildcard character @. The range of words covered by @ is set within SEARCH OPTIONS. Alternative symbols can be substituted for the wildcard characters @, *, % and ?. The characters which define word boundaries are listed in CHARACTERS TO TREAT AS DELIMITERS. Characters can be added to or removed from the list. SEARCH OPTIONS also has textboxes in which SKIPPING CHARACTERS and EQUAL CHARACTERS can be specified.


Word Delimiters

The punctuation and other symbols which act as word boundaries can be changed by the user by adding or removing characters from the CHARACTERS TO TREAT AS DELIMITERS box in SEARCH OPTIONS.


Wildcard Characters

Wildcard characters may be used to make a search more flexible. The standard wildcard characters are: *  matches 0 or more characters; %  matches 0 or 1 character; and ?  matches exactly 1 character. Other symbols can be used as wildcard characters. Go to SEARCH OPTIONS to change the wildcard characters.


SORTING


Sorting

The initial order in which the concordance lines appear corresponds approximately to their order in the text files. This order can be changed so that the concordance lines appear in a sequence that depends on the alphabetical order of preceding and following words. The concordance lines can be sorted primarily according to the alphabetical order of the word following the search word (a First Right, 1R, sort) and secondarily according to the alphabetical order of the word preceding the search word (a First Left or 1L sort). ADVANCED SORT contains two ways of defining sorts. The first allows the user to choose a primary, secondary and tertiary sort order and select from a drop down box one of the following for each sort: 3L, 2L, 1L, Search Term, 1R, 2R, 3R, Defined, Original Order, Unsorted.(Choosing REVERSE sorts on the ending of a word rather than the beginning.) It is possible for users to assign their own category to particular concordance lines and sort according to that category. Clicking with the right mouse button on a concordance line brings up a series of choices, one of which is ASSIGN LETTER. The user selects a letter (a-z) to the line and repeats the process for other lines. The lines can be ordered according to these assigned letters by choosing DEFINED in the ADVANCED SORT. Alternatively, the user can select CUSTOMISED SORT and enter a sort order manually, such as 3L-3R.


LANGUAGE


Language

The language setting makes it easier to work with the appropriate accents, sorting order, etc. It is also possible to make changes to the System Font. Note that selecting LANGUAGE when a corpus is loaded will cause the corpus to be unloaded.


TAGS


Tag Settings

The information entered in TAG SETTINGS is checked during the COLLECT TAG INFO. The Tag Start character and Tag Stop characters must be entered e.g., < and > (a space is indicated by #). In addition, particular tags that are to be tracked are also specified individually. Once this is done (and following the operation of COLLECT TAG INFO), clicking on a concordance line will display the tracked tags in the lower left of the window. Alternatively, holding down the right mouse button and clicking on a concordance line will produce a pop-up display. Choosing DISPLAY INFO will produce a list of the tracked tags for the selected line.


Collect Tag Info

When a corpus is loaded, the COLLECT TAG INFO process is invoked and the program checks for the tag information entered in TAG SETTINGS. Clicking CANCEL ALL stops the collection process. The COLLECT TAG INFO routine can be run at any time. When the process is complete, a word count is given on the lower right of the screen.


MENU


Shortcuts

This is a brief description of the menu shortcuts:

File menu:

Ctrl-L	Add file(s) to current corpus

Ctrl-V	Select a corpus text to view from the list of available files

Ctrl-Q	Exit MonoConc Pro

Concordance menu:

Ctrl-S	Generate concordance based on a search pattern

Ctrl-A	Generate concordance based on a search pattern using advanced options

Ctrl-P	Print the concordance hits on the current printer

Frequency menu:

Ctrl-F	Collocate Frequency Data

Display menu:

Ctrl-D	Delete selected item(s) from the active concordance window

Ctrl-C	Copy selected item(s) from the active concordance window to clipboard

Sort menu:

Ctrl-F1	Sort hits based on the first word to the right and the first word to the left

Shift-Ctrl-F1	Sort hits based on the first word to the left and the first word to the right

Window menu:

Shift-F5	Cascade open windows

Info menu:

F1	Display this help file contents