| Chinese Text Project |
Advanced search functions
Search semantics
All search terms and conditions are taken in conjunction as applying to whatever object is selected as "basic unit" (at present this can only be set to "paragraph"). A unit is returned as part of the search result set if and only if it is within the search scope and matches all of the search parameters.
Text match mode
Text match mode determines how textual search phrases are matched to text in the database (this does not affect dictionary matches or other search parameters). In Automatic mode, a search phrase matches text in the database if and only if either a) the exact characters in the search phrase appear in order in a single passage of text; or b) the exact characters in the search phrase appear in order in a simplified Chinese version of a single passage of text. In Exact Characters mode, the search phrase matches text if and only if the exact characters in the search phrase appear in order in a single passage of text. In Identical mode, the search phrase matches text if and only if the exact characters and punctuation in the search phrase appear in order in a single passage of text.
Suppose the following (imaginary) fragment occurred in a paragraph of text:
...甯戚至齊。桓公問於管仲...
The following table indicates which queries in which text match modes would match this text:
| Query text | Automatic | Exact characters | Identical |
|---|---|---|---|
| 甯戚至齊。桓公問於管仲 |  | | |
| 齊桓公 | | |  |
| 桓公问于管仲 | | | |
| 桓公問于管仲 | | | |
Statistics
When the Display option on the Advanced Search page is set to "Statistics", the system displays a tabulated list of texts within the search scope which contain units which match the search parameters, and the number of times the parameters were matched within these units. Note that this means that only occurrences of search parameters within units which matched all search parameters will be counted. Therefore if you wish to compare the number of occurrences of one search term with those of another search term independently, you should do two independent searches, as doing a single search will count the number of times these terms appeared when they appeared together in the same paragraph.