Search for words, patterns, and phrases or view line selections from the Franco-Italian On-line Archive (FIOLA) using the XperSearch search engine:
The Xpersearch search engine facilitates searching for lexical patterns that occur at the beginnings and endings of words and at line endings (hence a useful tool for analyzing rhyme schemes). It also supports phrase searching and complex pattern matching using "regular expressions" (please refer to documentation linked to the search form). It does not support Boolean logical operators (and, or, not) however, so researchers who need these features may wish to try out a test implementation of the ARTFL PhiloLogic search engine that was applied to the original corpus of FIOLA texts in December 1998 (the corpus has been revised and expanded since that time; only XperSearch has the latest corpus). Opera del Vocabolario Italiano databaseof early Italian vernacular sources.
The XperSearch search engine was developed by Christian Dupont for the ItalNet Consortium as a quick and efficient means of conducting lexical analysis of small corpora of poetic or other texts commonly referred to by verse or line number. An initial version was implemented in 1998 as means of searching transcriptions of selected Franco-Italian texts as part of the FIOLA project. It was improved and modified in 2002 to facilitate its use with other textual corpora.
The XperSearch engine is designed to allow the user to easily retrieve matching words from all or selected documents in a corpus that contain common lexical patterns at the beginning or ends of words, at line endings, or phrases occuring anywhere within a line. It also supports most "regular expression" pattern-matching expressions to allow users to construct more complex types of targeted searches, though Boolean operators (and, or, not) are not implemented. Words that match the patterns entered are bolded and links are provided to view a surrounding context of lines from the document from which they were retrieved. Results may be viewed online or e-mailed for later reference.
Written in Perl, it will soon be made available for downloading and distribution under the terms of the GNU Public License. If you are interested in using XperSearch as a tool for analyzing your textual corpus, please contact Christian Dupont for details.