Carcass Advanced Tutorial - Part 3

In the smart query, it is also possible to specify that a particular position is optional.

For example, we could try to look for the same pattern as before (“apply” followed by a determiner and then by a noun) and specify that we want the determiner to be optional.

We will modify the query we just submitted by ticking the position is optional checkbox in Position 2. If you didn't modify anything after submitting the last query, all you have to do is tick the checkbox marked by the red arrow:

This query will return concordances like “apply makeup” and “apply the policies” because we told the program that position 2 was optional.

If we were interested in finding out what you can do with a “proposal” in English, we could try a query like this

• click on Clear form to reset the form
• Position 1: in the Part of speech drop-down menu select Verb
• Position 2: tick che position is optional checkbox and then select Determiner in the Part of speech drop-down menu
• Position 3: in the Lemma box type proposal

N.B.: this query will probably take more than a few seconds to complete.

The query will return concordances like “made proposals”, “reject the proposal”, etc.

In the next part of the tutorial, you'll learn about the Expert query editor.