3.1.4 Post search options

The post search options allow the user of WebCorp to change some of the settings specified before the search, namely the settings for output format, Web addresses and concordance span, without starting a new search. This allows the user to find the settings with which (s)he can work best.

In addition to adapting certain settings after the initial search, one can also specify the search by naming a certain date or time span on or within which the retrieved webpages were last modified to guarantee that one only takes the most recent results into consideration if the aim of the search is to find recent or ongoing language change.

The results can also be sorted by date or alphabetically, but they cannot be annotated or saved within WebCorp. The only way to achieve this is the time consuming copy-and-paste method.

What WebCorp can do is provide the user with basic statistical information regarding the query's results. It can show tables for the external or internal collocates of a search term (cf. Figures 18, 19). The external collocates can be useful if one is interested in the context a term occurs in.

The statistical information on the internal collocates comes in handy when one is interested in phraseology and is looking for creativity within a pattern, as the example in Figure 19 nicely shows.

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