Concordancing

Concordancing is the process of going through large amounts of text to find patterns in the way in which words are used. To do this we use a concordancer.

In the Classroom

Concordancing is useful because it can be used in the classroom by students to give them a better understanding of the language.

Collocation

When students learn new vocabulary they can not only look them up in the dictionary to get the meaning but also check them in a concordancer to see how the words are used and how they collocate with other words. Likewise, if students continuously make errors of collocation, get them to find out where they are making a mistake by using a concordancer - much better than doing it for them!

Cloze Tests

For practicing cloze tests (gapfill exercises), get students to use a concordancer to work out likely answers.

Example: i before e except after c

Using a concordancer to test the spelling "rule" i before e except after c. This demonstrates an approach to using a concordancer in investigating a particular aspect of language.

The results were exported in text format and edited for clarity. The contexts here are very limited since they are not used in the analysis at this stage.

Starting Out

The first step is to make a concordance search for:

*cie*

That is, we search for any text string which contains the letter combination cie. The asterisks either side are "wild cards" which represent any string of letters. Using this search we can find all words which "break" the i before e rule. The results are:

e state and federal agencies against the below
NVOLIO At this same ancient feast of Capulet's
heritable ranks and aristocracies, and taught 
rable properties of coefficient marking, but i
o measure different competencies. Most of thes
n the advice of our concierge, I enrolled our 
: I have noticed my conscience for many years,
s" as "Hell"; but a conscientious minority mem
tional price-fixing conspiracies; the attempte
pointed out certain contingencies that might l
fer them in several currencies. Consider this 
e are certainly odd deficiencies in the house,
in we are dolefully deficient, the humor that 
at make an industry efficient. By focusing on 
ccustomed to sudden emergencies, her head bega
e, for the ordinary exigencies of life, but th
 vague and terrible fancies filled his imagina
arcity of available frequencies at its incepti
cted by pert little irreverencies which would 
phers as to whether Omniscience could part an 
ome who opposed its policies in Vietnam. As Ho
measure the English proficiency level of non-n
g wisdom, prudence, science, art and, in brief
in the best English society twelve centuries l
e traditions of his species, this leader of th
ly. Not meeting any sufficient response, he we
 that the sophistic tendencies of some of its 
the measureless dim vacancies of space. Well,

What the concordancer has found is a list of words - in context - which break the spelling rule.

Refining the Rule with Plurals

The next step is to work out a better rule. In the list above there are several plurals such as species and currencies.

Does the rule still work with plurals? One way to find out is to do a search for:

*ceis

This shows all the words which follow the rule but which are also plurals. Doing a search for this string using a concordancer produces no results. That is to say, the rule does not apply with plurals.

So, we can refine the rule and now say:

i before e except after c excepting plurals

Refining More - looking for patterns

But what about the other words in the list above? If we take out the plurals we are left with:

NVOLIO At this same ancient feast of Capulet's
rable properties of coefficient marking, but i
n the advice of our concierge, I enrolled our 
: I have noticed my conscience for many years,
s" as "Hell"; but a conscientious minority mem
in we are dolefully deficient, the humor that 
at make an industry efficient. By focusing on 
phers as to whether Omniscience could part an 
measure the English proficiency level of non-n
g wisdom, prudence, science, art and, in brief
in the best English society twelve centuries l
ly. Not meeting any sufficient response, he we 

Looking at these words, it is obvious here that many of them contain the letter combination cien. Does this occur in a form that does not break the original rule? A search for:

*cein*

produces no results. So, the rule can be updated again:

i before e except after c and before n and excepting plurals

Excepting Others

Removing those words with the cien combination from the list, we are left with just two words which do not conform to the new rule:

n the advice of our concierge, I enrolled our 
in the best English society twelve centuries l

What connects these two words? For a start they are both derived from French and the next step in exploring this idea would be to look at a corpus of French texts to discover if there is some useful rule there which explains this.

In this way we can work through the words we find and slowly develop a rule which covers all eventualities.

Returning to Basics

However, returning to the original rule, i before e except after c, let us look at the opposite side, i.e. words containing ei but which do not follow c. A concordance search for:

*ei*

This produces a lot of results. These need to be filtered out. We can remove the following types of words from the list:

• words containing cei which conform to the rule
• ei formed by adding affixes, e.g. reinvent, seeing
• proper names with ei, e.g. Einstein, Leibnitz
• foreign words, e.g. monseigneur, reveille

Note: We are filtering out these words for the sake of space and clarity here; a full investigation into the rule would look at these words in more detail.

This leaves us with:

ou gave us the counterfeit fairly
ommand esteem. Deign to accept it
 murder of the deity against whom
be used in but eight bouts only, 
d us boldly on either side. Thoug
ld folks, many feign as they were
gined that the foreign importer p
t By some vile forfeit of untimel
nd also how to freight up against
ders have many heifers, but our
 Fame from her height looked down
rimes, however heinous, qualified
 else, and the heir and ancestor 
e I waited his leisure to attend 
orses began to neigh and snort an
 Pretty soon a neighbor came in a
ptain Kidd was neither particular
s under way -- nuclei of future v
s off and made obeisance and many
e found in any pharmacopeia that 
gotten I was a plebeian, I was re
 the cats. The reign of universal
y only. I give rein to them, and 
evil casting a seine of lace, (Wi
atus? -- devil seize you!" "Amica
the colourless skein of life, and
 gone! The old sleight-of-hand ex
ld assembly of sovereign states, 
rops to die of surfeit in the mud
icipating in a surveillance of fe
f a lotion for their wounds; yet 
 the multiplex theism of certain 
s to raise the veil of sorrow fro
nounced with a vein of pride in h
 will call him villein." "No-no; 
 you seemed to weigh every minute
ina when these weird figure s drew

How do we account for these results, each of which is an exception to the rule? A lot of these words derive from Latin and French (which is, of course, itself derived from Latin) and this may be an avenue worth exploring.

Perhaps, however, the use of ie or ei is dependant on the sound of the word. Another avenue worth exploring.

But one conclusion is obvious: the original rule i before e except after c does not work and to make it work we would need to create a rule so complex that it would lose its value as an aid to learning English spelling.

A lot of people take the rule for granted, as they do many other aspects of English. This simple demonstration with a concordancer has shown the rule is not valid in a great many, not just a few, cases.