diff --git a/lucene/src/test/org/apache/lucene/search/spans/TestSpanFirstQuery.java b/lucene/src/test/org/apache/lucene/search/spans/TestSpanFirstQuery.java
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..b95e7719b76
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+++ b/lucene/src/test/org/apache/lucene/search/spans/TestSpanFirstQuery.java
@@ -0,0 +1,67 @@
+package org.apache.lucene.search.spans;
+
+/**
+ * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
+ * contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
+ * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
+ * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
+ * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
+ * the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
+ *
+ *     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
+ *
+ * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
+ * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
+ * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
+ * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
+ * limitations under the License.
+ */
+
+import org.apache.lucene.analysis.Analyzer;
+import org.apache.lucene.analysis.MockAnalyzer;
+import org.apache.lucene.analysis.MockTokenizer;
+import org.apache.lucene.document.Document;
+import org.apache.lucene.document.Field;
+import org.apache.lucene.index.IndexReader;
+import org.apache.lucene.index.RandomIndexWriter;
+import org.apache.lucene.index.Term;
+import org.apache.lucene.search.IndexSearcher;
+import org.apache.lucene.store.Directory;
+import org.apache.lucene.util.LuceneTestCase;
+import org.apache.lucene.util.automaton.CharacterRunAutomaton;
+import org.apache.lucene.util.automaton.RegExp;
+
+public class TestSpanFirstQuery extends LuceneTestCase {
+  public void testStartPositions() throws Exception {
+    Directory dir = newDirectory();
+    
+    // mimic StopAnalyzer
+    CharacterRunAutomaton stopSet = new CharacterRunAutomaton(new RegExp("the|a|of").toAutomaton());
+    Analyzer analyzer = new MockAnalyzer(MockTokenizer.SIMPLE, true, stopSet, true);
+    
+    RandomIndexWriter writer = new RandomIndexWriter(random, dir, analyzer);
+    Document doc = new Document();
+    doc.add(newField("field", "the quick brown fox", Field.Index.ANALYZED));
+    writer.addDocument(doc);
+    Document doc2 = new Document();
+    doc2.add(newField("field", "quick brown fox", Field.Index.ANALYZED));
+    writer.addDocument(doc2);
+    
+    IndexReader reader = writer.getReader();
+    IndexSearcher searcher = new IndexSearcher(reader);
+    
+    // user queries on "starts-with quick"
+    SpanQuery sfq = new SpanFirstQuery(new SpanTermQuery(new Term("field", "quick")), 1);
+    assertEquals(1, searcher.search(sfq, 10).totalHits);
+    
+    // user queries on "starts-with the quick"
+    SpanQuery include = new SpanFirstQuery(new SpanTermQuery(new Term("field", "quick")), 2);
+    sfq = new SpanNotQuery(include, sfq);
+    assertEquals(1, searcher.search(sfq, 10).totalHits);
+    
+    writer.close();
+    searcher.close();
+    reader.close();
+    dir.close();
+  }
+}