4.4.2. Single Layer Search tab

4.4.2. Single Layer Search tab
Prev	4.4. Structured search through multiple annotation files	Next

The Single Layer tab offers a more elaborate search than the Substring Search tab. The first thing that is different from the Substring Search tab is that the Single Layer Search tab has a query history. Clicking the < and > button makes the tab respectively go backward and forward one query. There is also the possibility to save queries, as well as loading previously saved queries.

Figure 4.22. Single Layer Search

Furthermore, the tab offers different modes to restrict the search. The first mode lets you choose the form of the results. There are three options:

Annotation: the search string is part of or exact match in an annotation.
N-gram over annotations: each element of the search string (elements are divided by spaces) is part of or exact match in one of several consecutive annotations.
N-gram within annotation: each element of the search string (elements are divided by spaces) is part of or exact match in one of several consecutive tokens within one annotation.

The following mode offers the straightforward distinction between case sensitive and case insensitive search. The third mode lets the user choose if the element of the first mode should contain the search string (substring match), if the element should exactly match the search string (exact match) or if some regular expression should be used in the match (regular expression).Finally, one can choose to restrict the search to one tier, a tier type or a participant.

Wildcards and negation

When you choose an N-gram to be the form of the result, you can use two more options: a wild card and a negation. The wildcard takes the form of a #-sign. For instance, the search string the # man with the mode N-gram over annotations would return three annotations per hit: the first annotation contains the (or exactly matches that, if the mode exact match is chosen), the second annotation may contain anything due to the use of the wildcard and the third annotation contains or exactly matches man. If the mode N-gram within annotation is chosen, each hit contains one annotation. In this annotation there is a N-gram consisting of three tokens where the first token contains or exactly matches the, the second may be anything and the third contains or exactly matches man.

If you want to find N-grams where a token matches anything but one string, you can use the negation operator NOT(...), where you can fill in the search string not to be matched on the dots. For instance, the search string the NOT(strange) man would return 3-grams in same way as describe above, but the hits where the second annotation or token matches strange are left out.