Drill-down queries find "expansions" or longer phrase-frames incorporating query terms. The results indicate the number and percentage of occurrences of each phrase represented by specific longer phrases. They also help detect the boundaries of recurrent phrases.
By default drill-down queries return expansions both right and left of the query term. To restrict the direction, insert start / end of phrase tags:
- expansion to right – ^by[[:>:]] matches phrases starting in the word by
- expansion to left – [[:<:]]floor$ matches phrases ending in the word floor
Drill-down sums all counts of a given string, ignoring PoS tags. Consequently frequencies may be greater than those reported by other query types where the same sequence of words received various taggings.