The York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus
of Old English Prose

Getting started


The directions below are for Windows.


PPCME2 users

If you are currently using the PPCME2 and have the CorpusSearch program, you can start using the corpus right away.

All the files on the YCOE CD are ascii files so there is no installation to be done. Just copy the YCOE folder from the CD to your computer. A good place to put it is in the Program Files folder, where your PPCME2-CS folder is.

It is possible for CorpusSearch to access the parsed files from anywhere on your computer, but you may have to type very long path names in order to do this. To access the parsed files easily with minimal typing, you should put them in the same folder as the CSearch program icon (which should be the PPCME2-CS folder). There are two options:

  1. Rename the psd folder in PPCME2-CS me-psd, copy the psd folder from the YCOE folder to the PPCME2-CS folder and rename it oe-psd (the names are given as examples only, nothing hinges on using these exact names). You can now search Middle English files using me-psd\* when asked for a source file and Old English files using oe-psd\*.

  2. Copy the files from the YCOE psd folder into the PPCME2-CS psd folder. If you do this, you will have all your Old and Middle English files in the same folder. Because all the Middle English files begin with cm and the Old English with co, you can differentiate them when searching by using psd\cm* for Middle English and psd\co* for Old English.
Please note that there are some differences in the annotation systems of the two corpora. A list of the major differences can be found here; for further information, the user should refer to the various manuals.



Non PPCME2 users

The first step is to get a copy of the CorpusSearch program. Note that CorpusSearch 1 (the version described in this documentation) is no longer available. CorpusSearch 2 is open source software and can be downloaded from http://corpussearch.sourceforge.net/. Further instructions on using CorpusSearch 2 can be found on the PCEEC homepage.

After you have installed CorpusSearch, copy the psd folder from the YCOE CD into the folder containing the CSearch program icon. Then just follow the directions for using CorpusSearch. When asked for a source file use psd\* to search the entire corpus or psd\filename.psd for individual files.

See also CorpusSearch for Windows for some advice on how to use CorpusSearch easily and efficiently under Windows, and A first search for instructions on running CorpusSearch.