1Lingua::EN::PluralToSinUgsuelrarC(o3n)tributed Perl DocuLmienngtuaat:i:oEnN::PluralToSingular(3)
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NAME

6       Lingua::EN::PluralToSingular - change an English plural to a singular
7

SYNOPSIS

9           use Lingua::EN::PluralToSingular qw/to_singular is_plural/;
10           my @words = qw/knives sheep dog dogs cannabis/;
11           for my $word (@words) {
12               if (is_plural ($word)) {
13                   my $sing = to_singular ($word);
14                   print "The singular of '$word' is '$sing'.\n";
15               }
16               else {
17                   print "'", ucfirst ($word), "' is not plural.\n";
18               }
19           }
20
21       produces output
22
23           The singular of 'knives' is 'knife'.
24           The singular of 'sheep' is 'sheep'.
25           'Dog' is not plural.
26           The singular of 'dogs' is 'dog'.
27           'Cannabis' is not plural.
28
29       (This example is included as synopsis.pl
30       <https://fastapi.metacpan.org/source/BKB/JSON-
31       Parse-0.21/examples/synopsis.pl> in the distribution.)
32

VERSION

34       This documents Lingua::EN::PluralToSingular version 0.21 corresponding
35       to git commit 2d53254eeaec8d2006655f63f61b4f6868e81153
36       <https://github.com/benkasminbullock/Lingua-EN-
37       PluralToSingular/commit/2d53254eeaec8d2006655f63f61b4f6868e81153>
38       released on Thu Jun 21 17:48:56 2018 +0900.
39

DESCRIPTION

41       This converts words denoting a plural in the English language into
42       words denoting a singular noun.
43

FUNCTIONS

45   to_singular
46           my $singular = to_singular ($word);
47
48       Convert $word into its singular form. For example,
49
50           to_singular ('cats')
51
52       returns 'cat'. If the word is unknown or does not seem to be plural,
53       "to_singular" returns the word itself, so
54
55           to_singular ('battlehorn');
56
57       returns 'battlehorn'.
58
59   is_plural
60           if (is_plural ($word)) {
61               print "There are too many $word here.\n";
62           }
63           else {
64               print "There is a $word here.\n";
65           }
66
67       Returns 1 if the word is a valid plural, 0 if not. It also returns 1
68       for ambiguous words like "sheep".
69

LIMITATIONS AND CAVEATS

71   Assumes the input is a noun
72       "to_singular" assumes its input is a noun. For example, "lives" may be
73       the plural of "life", or the verb "live", as in "he lives". The routine
74       assumes a noun and converts to "life".
75
76   Distinguishes lower and upper case
77       It does not deal with capitalized words. If the input word may be
78       capitalized, or if its initial letter may be capitalized, the user must
79       preprocess it to put it into the normal case. So, for example,
80
81           to_singular ('FLIES');
82
83       returns 'FLIES' and
84
85           to_singular ('Wolves');
86
87       returns 'Wolve'. Similarly,
88
89           to_singular ('Charles');
90
91       returns 'Charles', but
92
93           to_singular ('charles');
94
95       returns 'charle', since the exception only applies if the word is
96       capitalized.
97
98   Does not handle pronouns
99       The module does not attempt to handle pronoun forms like "ourselves" or
100       "themselves". These words are left unaltered.
101
102   False plurals also accepted
103       For the sake of user convenience, false plurals like "octopi" are also
104       accepted by the module. (The plural of "octopus" is "octopuses".)
105
106   Not all exceptional plurals are included
107       There are many exceptions which have not been included, notably words
108       with Latin or Greek plurals.
109

STANDALONE SCRIPT

111       The script scripts/singular provides a quick way to get singular
112       versions of nouns:
113
114           singular cats dogs geese
115           # Prints "cat dog goose".
116

SEE ALSO

118       Lingua::EN::Inflect
119           Lingua::EN::Inflect by Damian Conway converts English singular
120           nouns to plurals, but not vice-versa.
121
122       Lingua::EN::Inflect::Number
123           Lingua::EN::Inflect::Number is supposed to do the same thing as
124           this module. However, as of the time of writing (version 1.12) it's
125           actually based on the third-person verb handling of
126           Lingua::EN::Inflect, in other words it takes a verb in the "he
127           says" form and converts it into "say". Thus you get bugs like
128           <https://rt.cpan.org/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=64564> where the
129           reporter demonstrates that 'to_S incorrectly renders the singular
130           of "statuses" as "statuse."'
131

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

133       Thanks to Xan Charbonnet and H2CHANG for various additions and fixes.
134       Lisa Hare contributed support for plurals ending in i as part of the
135       2016 Pull Request Challenge.
136

AUTHOR

138       Ben Bullock, <bkb@cpan.org>
139

141       This package and associated files are copyright (C) 2011-2018 Ben
142       Bullock.
143
144       You can use, copy, modify and redistribute this package and associated
145       files under the Perl Artistic Licence or the GNU General Public
146       Licence.
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150perl v5.38.0                      2023-07-20   Lingua::EN::PluralToSingular(3)
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