1WN(1) WordNet™ User Commands WN(1)
2
6 wn - command line interface to WordNet lexical database
7
9 wn [ searchstr ] [ -h] [ -g ] [ -a ] [ -l ] [ -o ] [ -s ] [ -n# ] [
10 search_option... ]
11
13 wn() provides a command line interface to the WordNet database, allow‐
14 ing synsets and relations to be displayed as formatted text. For each
15 word, different searches are provided, based on syntactic category and
16 pointer types. Although only base forms of words are usually stored in
17 WordNet, users may search for inflected forms. A morphological process
18 is applied to the search string to generate a form that is present in
19 WordNet.
20 The command line interface is often useful when writing scripts to
22 extract information from the WordNet database. Post-processing of the
23 output with various scripting tools can reformat the results as
24 desired.
25
27 -h Print help text before search results.
28 -g Display textual glosses associated with synsets.
30 -a Display lexicographer file information.
32 -o Display synset offset of each synset.
34 -s Display each word's sense numbers in synsets.
36 -l Display the WordNet copyright notice, version number,
38 and license.
39 -n# Perform search on sense number # only.
41 -over Display overview of all senses of searchstr in all syn‐
43 tactic categories.
44 Search Options
46 Note that the last letter of search_option generally denotes the part
47 of speech that the search applies to: n for nouns, v for verbs, a for
48 adjectives, and r for adverbs. Multiple searches may be done for
49 searchstr with a single command by specifying all the appropriate
50 search options.
51 -syns(n | v | a | r)
54 Display synonyms and immediate hypernyms of synsets con‐
55 taining searchstr. Synsets are ordered by estimated
56 frequency of use. For adjectives, if searchstr is in a
57 head synset, the cluster's satellite synsets are dis‐
58 played in place of hypernyms. If searchstr is in a
59 satellite synset, its head synset is also displayed.
60 -simsv Display verb synonyms and immediate hypernyms of synsets
62 containing searchstr. Synsets are grouped by similarity
63 of meaning.
64 -ants(n | v | a | r)
66 Display synsets containing antonyms of searchstr. For
67 adjectives, if searchstr is in a head synset, searchstr
68 has a direct antonym. The head synset for the direct
69 antonym is displayed along with the direct antonym's
70 satellite synsets. If searchstr is in a satellite
71 synset, searchstr has an indirect antonym via the head
72 synset, which is displayed.
73 -faml(n | v | a | r)
75 Display familiarity and polysemy information for search‐
76 str.
77 -hype(n | v) Recursively display hypernym (superordinate) tree for
79 searchstr (searchstr IS A KIND OF _____ relation).
80 -hypo(n | v) Display immediate hyponyms (subordinates) for searchstr
82 (_____ IS A KIND OF searchstr relation).
83 -tree(n | v) Display hyponym (subordinate) tree for searchstr. This
85 is a recursive search that finds the hyponyms of each
86 hyponym.
87 -coor(n | v) Display the coordinates (sisters) of searchstr. This
89 search prints the immediate hypernym for each synset
90 that contains searchstr and the hypernym's immediate
91 hyponyms.
92 -deri(n | v) Display derivational morphology links between noun and
94 verb forms.
95 -domn(n | v | a | r)
97 Display domain that searchstr has been classified in.
98 -domt(n | v | a | r)
100 Display all terms classified as members of the search‐
101 str's domain.
102 -subsn Display substance meronyms of searchstr (HAS SUBSTANCE
104 relation).
105 -partn Display part meronyms of searchstr (HAS PART relation).
107 -membn Display member meronyms of searchstr (HAS MEMBER rela‐
109 tion).
110 -meron Display all meronyms of searchstr (HAS PART, HAS MEMBER,
112 HAS SUBSTANCE relations).
113 -hmern Display meronyms for searchstr tree. This is a recur‐
115 sive search that prints all the meronyms of searchstr
116 and all of its hypernyms.
117 -sprtn Display part of holonyms of searchstr (PART OF rela‐
119 tion).
120 -smemn Display member of holonyms of searchstr (MEMBER OF rela‐
122 tion).
123 -ssubn Display substance of holonyms of searchstr (SUBSTANCE OF
125 relation).
126 -holon Display all holonyms of searchstr (PART OF, MEMBER OF,
128 SUBSTANCE OF relations).
129 -hholn Display holonyms for searchstr tree. This is a recur‐
131 sive search that prints all the holonyms of searchstr
132 and all of each holonym's holonyms.
133 -entav Display entailment relations of searchstr.
135 -framv Display applicable verb sentence frames for searchstr.
137 -causv Display cause to relations of searchstr.
139 -pert(a | r) Display pertainyms of searchstr.
141 -attr(n | a) Display adjective values for noun attribute, or noun
143 attributes of adjective values.
144 -grep(n | v | a | r)
146 List compound words containing searchstr as a substring.
147
149 The results of a search are written to the standard output. For each
150 search, the output consists a one line description of the search, fol‐
151 lowed by the search results.
152 All searches other than -over list all senses matching the search
154 results in the following general format. Items enclosed in italicized
155 square brackets ([ ... ]) may not be present.
156 One line listing the number of senses matching the search
158 request.
159 Each sense matching the search requested displayed as follows:
161 Sense n
163 [{synset_offset}] [<lex_filename>] word1[#sense_number][, word2...]
164 Where n is the sense number of the search word, synset_offset is
166 the byte offset of the synset in the data.pos file corresponding
167 to the syntactic category, lex_filename is the name of the lexi‐
168 cographer file that the synset comes from, word1 is the first
169 word in the synset (note that this is not necessarily the search
170 word) and sense_number is the WordNet sense number assigned to
171 the preceding word. synset_offset, lex_filename, and sense_num‐
172 ber are generated when the -o, -a, and -s options, respectively,
173 are specified.
174 The synsets matching the search requested are printed below each
176 sense's synset output described above. Each line of output is
177 preceded by a marker (usually =>), then a synset, formatted as
178 described above. If a search traverses more one level of the
179 tree, then successive lines are indented by spaces corresponding
180 to its level in the hierarchy. When the -g option is specified,
181 synset glosses are displayed in parentheses at the end of each
182 synset. Each synset is printed on one line.
183 Senses are generally ordered from most to least frequently used,
185 with the most common sense numbered 1. Frequency of use is
186 determined by the number of times a sense is tagged in the vari‐
187 ous semantic concordance texts. Senses that are not semanti‐
188 cally tagged follow the ordered senses. Note that this ordering
189 is only an estimate based on usage in a small corpus.
190 Verb senses can be grouped by similarity of meaning, rather than
192 ordered by frequency of use. The -simsv search prints all
193 senses that are close in meaning together, with a line of dashes
194 indicating the end of a group. See wngroups(7) for a discussion
195 of how senses are grouped.
196 The -over search displays an overview of all the senses of the
198 search word in all syntactic categories. The results of this
199 search are similar to the -syns search, however no additional
200 (ex. hypernym) synsets are displayed, and synset glosses are
201 always printed. The senses are grouped by syntactic category,
202 and each synset is annotated as described above with synset_off‐
203 set, lex_filename, and sense_number as dictated by the -o, -a,
204 and -s options. The overview search also indicates how many of
205 the senses in each syntactic category are represented in the
206 tagged texts. This is a way for the user to determine whether a
207 sense's sense number is based on semantic tagging data, or was
208 arbitrarily assigned. For each sense that has appeared in such
209 texts, the number of semantic tags to that sense are indicated
210 in parentheses after the sense number.
211 If a search cannot be performed on some senses of searchstr, the
213 search results are headed by a string of the form:
214 X of Y senses of searchstr
215 The output of the -deri search shows word forms that are morpho‐
217 logically related to searchstr. Each word form pointed to from
218 searchstr is displayed, preceded by RELATED TO-> and the syntac‐
219 tic category of the link, followed, on the next line, by its
220 synset. Printed after the word form is #n where n indicates the
221 WordNet sense number of the term pointed to.
222 The -domn and -domt searches show the domain that a synset has
224 been classified in and, conversely, all of the terms that have
225 been assigned to a specific domain. A domain is either a TOPIC,
226 REGION or USAGE, as reflected in the specific pointer character
227 stored in the database, and displayed in the output. A -domn
228 search on a term shows the domain, if any, that each synset con‐
229 taining searchstr has been classified in. The output display
230 shows the domain type (TOPIC, REGION or USAGE), followed by the
231 syntactic category of the domain synset and the terms in the
232 synset. Each term is followed by #n where n indicates the Word‐
233 Net sense number of the term. The converse search, -domt, shows
234 all of the synsets that have been placed into the domain search‐
235 str, with analogous markers.
236 When -framv is specified, sample illustrative sentences and
238 generic sentence frames are displayed. If a sample sentence is
239 found, the base form of search is substituted into the sentence,
240 and it is printed below the synset, preceded with the EX:
241 marker. When no sample sentences are found, the generic sen‐
242 tence frames are displayed. Sentence frames that are acceptable
243 for all words in a synset are preceded by the marker *>. If a
244 frame is acceptable for the search word only, it is preceded by
245 the marker =>.
246 Search results for adjectives are slightly different from those
248 for other parts of speech. When an adjective is printed, its
249 direct antonym, if it has one, is also printed in parentheses.
250 When searchstr is in a head synset, all of the head synset's
251 satellites are also displayed. The position of an adjective in
252 relation to the noun may be restricted to the prenominal, post‐
253 nominal or predicative position. Where present, these restric‐
254 tions are noted in parentheses.
255 When an adjective is a participle of a verb, the output indi‐
257 cates the verb and displays its synset.
258 When an adverb is derived from an adjective, the specific adjec‐
260 tival sense on which it is based is indicated.
261 The morphological transformations performed by the search code
263 may result in more than one word to search for. WordNet auto‐
264 matically performs the requested search on all of the strings
265 and returns the results grouped by word. For example, the verb
266 saw is both the present tense of saw and the past tense of see.
267 When passed searchstr saw, WordNet performs the desired search
268 first on saw and next on see, returning the list of saw senses
269 and search results, followed by those for see.
270
272 wn() normally exits with the number of senses displayed. If searchword
273 is not found in WordNet, it exits with 0.
274 If the WordNet database cannot be opened, an error messages is dis‐
276 played and wn() exits with -1.
277
279 WNHOME Base directory for WordNet. Default is
280 /usr/local/WordNet-3.0.
281 WNSEARCHDIR Directory in which the WordNet database has been
283 installed. Default is WNHOME/dict.
284
286 HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WordNet\3.0\WNHome
287 Base directory for WordNet. Default is C:\Pro‐
288 gram Files\WordNet\3.0.
289
291 index.pos database index files
292 data.pos database data files
294 *.vrb files of sentences illustrating the use of verbs
296 pos.exc morphology exception lists
298
300 wnintro(1), wnb(1), wnintro(3), lexnames(5), senseidx(5) wndb(5), wnin‐
301 put(5), morphy(7), wngloss(7), wngroups(7).
302
304 Please report bugs to wordnet@princeton.edu.
305WordNet 3.0 Dec 2006 WN(1)