Search direct quotations in news

[动态语法]

how to count the exact numbers of direct quotations in news. Can I use Wordsmith to work it out? I tried calculate the concordance using the "said", but the output contain also the indirect speech. Do you have better way to work it out?

You can try to:

Search all these speech verbs and then eliminate the irrelevant cases manually.

Do the same by searching " ".

Or both.

There is no easy way out since this is a complex phenomenon.

 

[xujiajin]

回复: Search direct quotations in news

WordSmith does not support punctuation search.
Search \" with AntConc by enabling Regex.
Delete duplicates in the search result.

 

[动态语法]

回复: Search direct quotations in news

WordSmith does not support punctuation search.
Search \" with AntConc by enabling Regex.
Delete duplicates in the search result.

If you have to use WS, try change the language setting.

WS Settings -> Language -> Symbols within word, input ", and check "allow at start of word" "Allow to end of word".

To search for instances of ", use Concordance to search the symbol " as a "search word". Or both :" and : ("/:").

Otherwise use Word or other programs to replace quotations marks in the document with <Q> plus the original punctuation mark, then search <Q> under Concordance.