Hong Kong Corpus of Spoken English (Advanced Searches)

You can search for one, two or three words in combination, e.g. have (search word/phrase one), hair cut (search word/phrase two) and her (search word/phrase three). 

• Span - This function allows you to limit the search in terms of the distance between the search items.  For example, a search for 'expenditure' and 'increase' with a span of 2 means that only instances with up to two intervening words are displayed.  (e.g. 'expenditure of the increase element'.

• t-score - a t-score can be used to calculate the significance of the association of two words. A t-score of 2.0 or more indicates a significant association. This function only works for two word/phrase searches and a span needs to be specified.

• Sort type - the instances can be sorted alphabetically based on the word immediately to the left or the right of the centred word. If you select 'sort position' , the second or third word is sorted based on their position relative to the centred word.