> I would like to know if it is possible to search the BNC in order
> to find out which adverbs precede a particular verb.
I don't know if you're restricted to the BNC, but if you're open to
data from other sources, you might want to try out the Linguist's
Search Engine (LSE), http://lse.umiacs.umd.edu. Your search is a good
match for its capabilities.
For example, I typed "I quickly wrote the letter" as an exemplar
sentence, edited down its parse to the relevant subtree in a few mouse
clicks, issued the query, and got back 49 hits showing 'write' (in
various inflections) with adverbs like 'efficiently', 'feverishly',
'never', 'originally', 'recently', and 'specifically'. It took just
moments to do all that, querying against the built-in collection of 3
million Web sentences. If that's not a broad enough sample, the "My
Collections" feature will let you build verb-specific collections from
the Web (e.g. a collection containing just sentences including some
inflection of 'write') and then you can issue the same query.
If Web sentences are not appropriate, an additional feature, soon to
be released, will allow you to upload and search collections of your
own, rather than searching only Web data.
Cheers,
Philip
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Philip Resnik, Associate Professor
Department of Linguistics and Institute for Advanced Computer Studies
1401 Marie Mount Hall UMIACS phone: (301) 405-6760
University of Maryland Linguistics phone: (301) 405-8903
College Park, MD 20742 USA Fax: (301) 314-2644 / (301) 405-7104
http://umiacs.umd.edu/~resnik E-mail: resnik@umiacs.umd.edu
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