TIGERSearch - tools for linguistic text exploration -

Technically speaking, TIGERSearch is a specialized search engine for retrieving information from a database of graph structures (usually called "treebank"). This means that the text ("text corpus") which is to be searched by TIGERSearch must have been annotated beforehand, e.g. with grammatical analyses ("syntax trees"). TIGERSearch gives linguists intuitive access to such specialized "linguistic databases":

	TIGERSearch is delivered with a carefully designed graphical user interface. Novices can formulate queries in an intuitive manner by 'drawing' partial graphs. Advanced users will prefer the textual query input, which is supported by syntax highlighting and various menus for choosing the correct feature names etc. for a given corpus. Query results (e.g. syntax trees) are displayed graphically by the TIGERSearch GraphViewer, which allows for convenient browsing of results.
	The query language of TIGERSearch incorporates elements which are well known from grammar formalisms in (computational) linguistics. A restricted kind of attribute-value structures are available. Type definitions can be used to structure the corpus nomenclature. Template definitions help to break down complex queries.
	TIGERSearch provides XML-based interfaces for advanced applications, both for corpus import and for the export of results. State-of-the-art technologies can be used to manipulate and to aggregate query results. Basic tools are included for frequency calculations, export of query results in kwic (keyword in context) format, etc.

You can get a first impression of TIGERSearch by taking the guided tours for syntacticians and for lexicographers. An overview of the technical features is given in the TIGERSearch data sheet.