Quick Instructions

Download the DemoPro.exe and MONOPRO.HLP files to your (Windows) computer.

Open DemoPro

The program opens with two menus available: File and Info

I assume that you can find your way around the program to some extent just by trying different things. The following is more guided and is mainly designed to give you a sense of the range of search options. (Sorting and collocations is not covered in detail here.)

For a quick look:

  • Choose Load Corpus Files from the File menu. Select all (text-only) files that you want to load. Repeat to load files from other directories.
  • Click on Cancel All when the files load.
  • Choose Search from the Concordance menu
  • Enter a word or phrase
  • Click on a line to (i) see source info (lower left); (ii) see more context
  • Sort the results (Sort menu). Examine the collocates (Frequency menu). Examine the distribution (Display) menu.
  • Save or print the results
  • To look for examples of the perfect tense in an untagged English corpus, that is, to look for "has" or "have" followed by a word ending in -ed, choose Search and enter the string: ha?% *ed (See below for a more precise search.)
  • Say that we wanted to allow for an optional word to occur between HAVE and the PARTICIPLE. In this case, go to Search Options and set the range for @ to be 0 to 1, then enter the string: ha?% @ *ed. Sort on the Search Term and delete unwanted examples (Ctrl D).
    • To try a more complex string search based on regular expressions,
  • Choose Advanced Search from the Concordance menu. Select the Regular Expression radio button.
  • Let us use a regex query to find examples of the perfect tense in an untagged English corpus, that is, to look for "has" or "have" followed by a word ending in -en or -ed. The way to do this is to enter the following query: \bha[vs]e?\W\w+e[nd]\b (This may well seem complex, but it gives an idea of what you can do. The symbols are explained in the help file.)
  • Say that we wanted to allow for an optional word to occur between HAVE and the PARTICIPLE. In this case, enter the string: \bha[vs]e?(\W\w+){0,1}\W\w+e[nd]\b
  • This is fully explained in the manual. I have included these searches here simply to give an idea of the flexibility of the program.
    • The following search shows how you can take advantage of a tagged corpus, such as the BNC Sampler. (If you are not using the BNC, you will have to enter the tag format appropriate for your corpus.)
  • Go to Tag Settings: Normal Tags and enter < and > in Tag Start and Tag Stop (or whatever is appropriate).
  • Go to Tag Settings: Part of Speech Tags and (if you are working with the BNC corpus) check "Outside Word" and enter <w and <c on separate lines in Tag Start and > in Tag Stop. Click to check "Before Word".
  • Choose Load Corpus Files from the File menu. Select all (text-only) files that you want to load. Repeat to load files from other directories.
  • Let Collect Tag Info work through the files
  • Choose Advanced Search from the Concordance menu
  • Select Tag Search radio button
  • Enter queries in format word&tag. For example, to look for "make causatives", you could search for ma?e%& &PP* &VV*, which will find "make/made/makes" followed by a pronoun followed by a verb.
  • Go to the Display menu and choose Suppress Part of Speech (and repeat with Suppress Tags if required).
  • Sort the results (Sort menu). Examine the collocates (Frequency menu). Examine the distribution (Display) menu.
    • Send questions to barlow@athel.com