Announcing StringNet 4.0

[Nailung Tsao]

We’re pleased to announce the release of StringNet 4.0, an new version of our English lexico-grammatical knowledgebase. Full search access is freely available on line at http://nav.stringnet.org

Just as all previous versions, StringNet, 4.0 takes an English word (or words) as a query and responds with a ranked list of multiword and lexico-grammatical patterns in which that word is conventionally used (or in which those words conventionally co-occur) and concordances for each pattern. As a ‘net’, StringNet also links each pattern to its related patterns, to its more abstract counterparts (its parents) and more specific counterparts (its children). So it links ‘consider yourself lucky’ to its parents ‘consider [pron reflx] lucky’, ‘[verb] yourself lucky’ and ‘consider yourself [adj]’, for example. Also, clicking on any word or slot in any pattern displays its paradigm, a list of the substitutable words there representing the attested variation for that slot in that exact context. 

New function: Collocations

StringNet 4.0 has added a collocation search that takes a query word and provides two word collocations containing it (for a query of resemblance, it gives striking resemblance; passing resemblance, etc.). Additionally, each collocation is linked to contextual patterns that contain that collocation: ‘bear a striking resemblance to’, ‘more than a passing resemblance to’ for example.

Other new features

4.0 gives more flexibility for users to decide (1) how patterns are ranked; for example, there is now an option to rank results by pure frequency; and (2) what sorts of patterns to display; for example, users can ask to be shown only patterns with words and no POS slots or only patterns of one length (only 4-grams or only 3-grams, for example).

Feel free to use it for your research, teaching, or learning.

The original StringNet 3.0 will remain on line as well and a link to it is on the StringNet main page (http://nav.stringnet.org)

Best,

David Wible and Nai-Lung Tsao