Opera del Vocabolario Italiano

You may enter one or more words or patterns for searching. The vertical line (|) functions as the logical OR operator and the space as the logical AND operator. Thus,

scudo|spada

will search retrieve documents containing either scudo OR spada. Accordingly, entering

scudo spada

will retrieve documents containing both scudo AND spada within the same sentence. Note that a specific AND has not yet been implemented.

Searching for Phrases

Clicking on the checkbox labeled "phrase search" will result in the retrieval of only those documents that contain the specified search terms immediately adjacent to one another in the order specified without intervening words (i.e., phrases). Hence a searching for

bella donna

with the "phrase search" checkbox selected will result in the retrieval of only those documents which contain the phrase bella donna.

Logical operators may be used when searching for adjacent terms/phrases. For example, searching for:

bella|belle donna|donne

will retrieve documents containing both the singular and plural forms of the phrase.

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To represent an accented vowel in the search term, type the vowel followed by the appropriate accent indicator, as follows:

grave = back slash. Example: à --> a\
aigu = forward slash. Example: é --> e/
circonflexe = caret. Example: ê --> e^
cedille = coma. Example ç --> c,
trema = double quote. Example ö --> o"

If you want the search engine to match a vowel whether it is accented or not, type the vowel as a capital letter. For example, entering E will match the following characters: é ê è and e (no accent). Hence perchE would retrieve perché, perchè and perche.

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Pattern matching permits searches for words that contain a specified pattern, or a combination of letters that occur regularly in a variety of words. Pattern matching is an important component of searching for terms in the OVI database and allows the specification of a large number of words corresponding to defined patterns. For example, the search term femm.* will result in all of the words which begin with femm. Note that the search operator consists of the period "." (which represents any single letter) and the asterisk "*" (a second operator which indicates that there will be zero or more occurrences of any character after the pattern femm.). The asterisk by itself, therefore, is not sufficient, just as the period by itself represents any one, but only one, letter.

It is also possible to use the combination .* (period, asterisk) to leave certain characters of a search unspecified and attached to other, fixed characters. For example, the search string pruden.*a matches all words beginning with pruden and ending with a. This search strategy allows one to find all occurrences of the word prudenza (which is spelled in several ways including prudenzia, prudensa, prudentia and prudencia).

Pattern matching can be used in conjunction with logical operators. For example, a prase search of malvag.* femm.*|donn.* will result in all occurrences of forms of the adjective malvagia with forms of the nouns femmina or donna.

Following is a listing of most useful regular expression operators for searching the OVI database:

. (period)                 -- matches any single character
.* (period asterisk)       -- matches any string of characters
E (capital vowel)          -- matches all accented and non-accented forms
[a-z] (range in brackets)  -- matches a single character found in the specified range
| (vertical line)          -- logical "or" operator: uomo|donna

The pattern matching conventions used in the OVI database correspond to UNIX "regular expressions," a pattern matching language which is described in a number of UNIX manuals. Also see Brian Kernighan and Rob Pike, The UNIX Programming Environment (1984): 102-5 for a discussion of regular expressions.

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Use this field to restrict your search to the works of one or more authors represented in the database. In the Author: field, type the author's last name, such as Cavalcanti or cavalcanti (note case insensitivity). Author names should be specified without accents; Folgóre da San Gimignano, for example, should be entered as folgore. Compound names are most easily represented by entering the most peculiar part of the name. Thus, Guittone d'Arezzo should be searched as guittone or arezzo. A corpus defined as the works written by three writers can be represented as:

petrarca,boccaccio,dante  [note: no space after commas]

This limits the corpus to the works in the database written by Fransceso Petrarca, Giovanni Boccaccio, Dante Alighieri and the less famous Dante da Maiano. Note that the comma between the authors' names functions as an "OR" operator.

You may also specify one or more author names, by first or last names or initials, enclosing the query in double quotes. Note, however, that your entry must match exactly the OVI bibliographic information as found in the printed or online bibliographies. For example,

"Ugolino B"
"Buzzola d"
"de Manf"

all result in works by Ugolino Buzzola de' Manfredi. However, searching for "Ugolino M" will result in zero hits (this would require using an "AND" operator, which has not yet been implemented).

Multiple quoted author names must be separated by commas, such as:

"da Bologna","da San"  [note: no space after comma]

This formula would restrict the search to documents by authors containing da Bologna, da San Gimignano, da Santa Fiora, da San Concordio, and da San Miniato.

Note that the author is given as Anonimo only in cases where the text is considered a literary work. In all other cases an unknown author is signaled by an "=" (equal sign).

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Use this field to restrict your search to the titles of one or more works represented in the database. In the Title: field enter either a single word, or a string of words in double quotes, without accented characters. For example, entering ninfale will result in the selection of Boccaccio's Ninfale Fiesolano. Title searching on a single common word results in the selection of multiple titles containing that term. Thus, entering trattato in the title field results in a corpus of some fifteen documents containing trattato in the title, including Bono Giamboni's Trattato di Virtù e di Vizi (1292) and Jacopo Passavanti's Trattato dei sogni (1355).

Title searching also supports the "OR" operator (i.e., comma) in much the same way as author searching. For example, specifying:

testamento,cedola  [note: no space after comma]

Complete titles can also be searched by enclosing the complete title, as listed in the OVI Bibliography, with or without double quotes. Hence the queries:

"Fiore di rettorica"

Fiore di rettorica

will select all the editions of Bono Giamboni's Fiore di rettorica represented in the database. Note that such title searches are case insensitive, hence "fiore di rettorica" is equivalent to "Fiore di rettorica". Exact substrings from the OVI title will also match the document in question.

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Use this field to specify texts to be included in the search according to the year of composition assigned to them by the OVI. For example, entering 1265-1321 selects all texts assigned composition dates between these years. In addition to year ranges, you may limit the corpus to works composed in any individual year. For example, entering 1325 will select any works that have 1325 as their assigned date [but note that you cannot select multiple individual years by placing a comma between years (so doing will retrieve only those documents matching the first year)]

If a text is assigned more than one year as its date of composition, assume the first value given for single year date searches. For example, Guido Cavalcanti's Rime has been assigned the date range of 1270-1300 as the years of its composition. In this case the first year (1270) should be regarded as the date of composition for search purposes. Note that the single year date search functions only if the year searched is included as the first or only number of the date range. Hence, a corpus defined by entering the year 1270 in the year/range field will not include any works which have been assigned a date range such as 1265-1300 as the approximate period of their composition.

For more about searching the corpus according to date ranges versus single years, see the section on defining the corpus by period.

When limiting the corpus of the OVI search by date field, be aware that date ranges in the bibliography are indicated with either a hyphen (-) or a slash (/). The hyphen indicates that both the year in which the document was started and the year in which it was completed are known with certainty (or, in the case of a series of works which is considered one document in the database, the year of the first and the year of the last components). The slash indicates that one can reasonably assume that the document was composed at some time during the period thus indicated, but the exact date of its composition is unknown.

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Select texts to be searched by half-century periods. For example, to search texts composed in the first half of the thirteenth century, use 13a. To seach texts composed in the second half of that century, use 13b. Some texts will be appear in searches from more than one century. For example, Meo dei Tolomei's A nnulla guisa me posso soffrire/caribo/ has been assigned the date range 1291-1310 as the years of its composition. Thus, it will appear in period searches 13b and also 14a.

To search a period greater than 50 years, select all periods that apply. For example, selecting

13a,13b  [note: no space after comma]

will search all texts from the thirteenth century.

The user should note that a century begins with the year xx01. For example, the first year of the 14th century is 1301, not 1300, which is reckoned as the last year of the 13th century. However, if the date assigned to the text is an approximate date (i.e., circa 1300), then the text will be included from the subsequent half-century as well as its proper one (i.e., 1301-1350 as well as 1251-1300).

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Define Corpus by Specific or General Area

Use this field to select texts according to the specific or general area of their origin. Both a general linguistic area (General Area), which usually corresponds to a geographic region in Italy (tosc. = toscano), and a specific linguistic area (Specific Area), which when possible coincides with the name of a city or town (fior. = fiorentino; sang. = sangimignanese) have been specified in the bibliographic data for each text in the database.

If there is insufficient data to attribute a specific linguistic type associated with a city or town, the Specific Area field simply repeats the data in the General Area field. For example, including tosc as the General Area results in a search for all Tuscan texts (909). On the other hand, including fior as the Specific Area results in a search for only Fiorentine texts (347). Yet, including tosc as the Specific Area searches for all Tuscan texts that were not able to be attributed to any specific Tuscan city or town (175).

In the bibliographic data for the Specific Area field one will occasionally find the following combined notations:

• The character ">" (i.e. A>B) means that a text pertaining to the linguistic area A was copied by a scribe who modified it according to his own linguistic type B (patina linguistica).
• The character "/" (slash) (i.e. A/B) indicates that the the document mixes in a certain sense the linguistic type A and the linguistic type B (mescidanza linguictica).
• The character "-" (hyphen) (i.e. A-B) means that the language of the document constitutes a system that contains elements of both the linguistic type A and the linguistic type B (diasistema).
• A comma (",") (i.e. A,B) indicates that the text was written partially in language A, partially in language B.
• A question mark ("?") (i.e. A? or A/B?, etc.) means that the linguistic classification is uncertain.

These combined notations cannot be searched directly (e.g., one cannot enter A>B in the Specific Area field), but searching on either part of a combined notation will return documents that include that part in a combined notation (e.g. searching for A will return all instances of A A>B A-B etc.)

The collocation of the texts in specific and general linguistic areas is quite complex and the field contains some 114 general and specific linguistic areas. To determine which abbreviation(s) to include in your search, please consult:

• Table of Abbreviations for General and Specific Areas

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Document Forms

Use the single-letter abbreviations below to specify the following document forms:

V = verse
P = prose
M = mixed (i.e., verse and prose)

Documents Types

Use the single-letter abbreviations below to specify the following document types:

O = original
P = paraphrase
V = vulgarization
M = mixed (i.e.,original and vulgarization)
T = translation

Thus, to find all the prose vulgarizations in the database, enter P in the form field and V in the type field. This search will retrieve 78 documents.

Document Genres

The OVI has classified all documents in the database according to 22 genre categories. Please consult the table below for a complete list of these categories and their corresponding abbreviations. Note that these abbreviations must be entered exactly as the appear in the table (see the table for instructions and examples).

• Table of Abbreviations for Genres

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The OVI database provides two options for displaying search results: concordance and Key-Word-In-Context or KWIC reports, with the default being a concordance report. Both reports indicate in their headers the number of texts specified in the search corpus, the word(s) or phrase searched, and the total number of occurrences matched. A listing of the actual occurrences follows this general information. In a concordance report, each occurrence is represented by a short bibliographic citation, (an abbreviation of the author's name and the title of the work), the page number on which the word(s) or phrase searched occurs, and a passage of about 40 words in which the first search term is bolded. In a KWIC report, on the other hand, the short bibliographic citation is followed by a single line of text in which the first search term is centered and bolded. Full bibliographic references for each work represented in the search results appear at the bottom of both the concordance and KWIC reports

To view search results in a KWIC report format instead of the default concordance format, click the box labeled "KWIC report".

In the case where a search retrieves more than 25 occurrences, the report is divided into two parts. The first 25 occurrences are displayed on one page, which will have a link at the bottom to a second page which contains the rest of results. If the search results in very large number of occurrences, the result of results page may take a long time to load in the browser window. In such cases, hitting the "reload" button on the browser will only further delay the display of results. If you need to view the entire file, simply wait patiently for the entire page to download from the server, the last line of which will read END OF REPORT.

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Clicking the "frequency by title" checkbox overrides the display of results as a concordance or KWIC report, generating instead a count of the number of search term occurrences matched in descending order according to the titles specified in the search corpus. This feature is useful for getting a quick sense of how frequently a word or phrase was used by a particular author or authors during a particular time period.

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