1LINK-GENERATOR(1) General Commands Manual LINK-GENERATOR(1)
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6 link-generator - generate natural language sentences using Link Grammar
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9 link-generator --help
10 link-generator --version
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13 link-generator is a command-line tool for generating random sentences
14 whose syntax is determined by the specified link-grammar dictionary.
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17 link-generator
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20 The theory of Link Grammar is explained in many academic papers. In
21 the first of these, Daniel Sleator and Davy Temperley, "Parsing English
22 with a Link Grammar" (1991), the authors defined a new formal grammati‐
23 cal system called a "link grammar". A sequence of words is in the lan‐
24 guage of a link grammar if there is a way to draw "links" between words
25 in such a way that the local requirements of each word are satisfied,
26 the links do not cross, and the words form a consistent connected
27 graph. The authors encoded English grammar into such a system, and
28 wrote the link-parser command-line tool to parse English using this
29 grammar.
30 The engine that performs the parsing is separate from the dictionaries
32 describing a language. Currently, the most fully developed, complete
33 dictionaries are for the English and Russian languages, although exper‐
34 imental, incomplete dictionaries exist for German and eight other lan‐
35 guages.
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39 link-generator generates sentences.
40
43 --help Print usage and exit.
44 --version
46 Print program version and configuration details, and exit.
47 --usage
49 Print a short synopsis of the option flags.
50 -l language|dict_location, --language=language|dict_location
52 Specify the language to use, or the directory file-path to the
53 dictionary to use.
54 -s length, --length=length
56 If length is 0, read a sentence template. It may consist of
57 fully spelled-out words as well as wild-cards. The wild-card \*
58 represents any dictionary word. Wild-card specifications like
59 prefix\* and \*.n are also recognized.
60 Otherwise, it specifies the length of the sentences to generate.
62 All generated sentences will have exactly this length.
63 -c count, --count=count
66 Specify the number of sentences to generate. If this number is
67 less than the number of possible linkages, then a random subset
68 of possible linkages will be generated, and one representative
69 sentence for each linkage will be printed. The words in the rep‐
70 resentative sentence are randomly chosen from the set of words
71 associated with each disjunct in that linkage. If the count is
72 greater than the number of possible linkages, then one represen‐
73 tative sentence for each linkage will be printed.
74 If the -x option is set, and if the count is greater than the
76 number of possible linkages, then more than one representative
77 sentence will be printed for each linkage. Each sentence will
78 consist of word choices drawn randomly from the set of words as‐
79 sociated with each disjunct. An approximately equal number of
80 sentences will be printed for each linkage; if the count is high
81 enough, then all possible word-choices will be printed. Note
82 that this typically results in a combinatorial explosion!
83 -x, --explode
86 If set, and is the count is greater than the number of possible
87 linkages, then more than one sentence will be printed for each
88 linkage. Each sentence will have a distinct random word-choice
89 for that linkage.
90 -d, --disjuncts
93 Display linkage disjuncts.
94 --no-walls
97 Don't attach to walls in wildcard words.
98 -r, --random
101 Use unrepeatable random numbers.
102 -u, --unused
105 Display unused disjuncts.
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109 The link-parser is a command-line tool for parsing sentences. It
110 provides some additional information about the link-grammar
111 implementation.
112 Information on the link-grammar shared-library API and the link types
114 used in the parse is available at the AbiWord website
115 ⟨http://www.abisource.com/projects/link-grammar/⟩.
116 Peer-reviewed papers explaining Link Grammar can be found at original
118 CMU site ⟨http://www.link.cs.cmu.edu/link/papers⟩.
119 The source code of link-generator and the link-grammar library is lo‐
121 cated at GitHub ⟨https://github.com/opencog/link-grammar⟩.
122 The mailing list for Link Grammar discussion is at link-grammar Google
124 group ⟨http://groups.google.com/group/link-grammar?hl=en⟩.
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127 The link-grammar library were written by Daniel Sleator
128 <sleator@cs.cmu.edu>, Davy Temperley <dtemp@theory.esm.rochester.edu>,
129 and John Lafferty <lafferty@cs.cmu.edu>. The link-generator tool was
130 created by Amir Plivatsky <amirpli_at_gmail.com>.
131 This manual page was written by Ken Bloom <kbloom@gmail.com>, for the
133 Debian project, and updated Linas Vepstas <linasvepstas@gmail.com>.
134Version 5.9.0 2021-03-30 LINK-GENERATOR(1)