WordNet-3.0/doc/man/morphy.7

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.TH MORPHY 7WN "Dec 2006" "WordNet 3.0" "WordNet\(tm"
.SH NAME
morphy \- discussion of WordNet's morphological processing
.SH DESCRIPTION
Although only base forms of words are usually stored in WordNet,
searches may be done on inflected forms.  A set of morphology
functions, Morphy, is applied to the search string to generate a form
that is present in WordNet.

Morphology in WordNet uses two types of processes to try to convert
the string passed into one that can be found in the WordNet database.
There are lists of inflectional endings, based on syntactic category,
that can be detached from individual words in an attempt to find a
form of the word that is in WordNet.  There are also exception list
files, one for each syntactic category, in which a search for an
inflected form is done.  Morphy tries to use these two processes in an
intelligent manner to translate the string passed to the base form
found in WordNet.  Morphy first checks for exceptions, then uses the
rules of detachment.  The Morphy functions are not independent from
WordNet. After each transformation, WordNet is searched for the
resulting string in the syntactic category specified.

The Morphy functions are passed a string and a syntactic category.  A
string is either a single word or a collocation.  Since some words,
such as \fBaxes\fP can have more than one base form (\fBaxe\fP and
\fBaxis\fP), Morphy works in the following manner.  The first time
that Morphy is called with a specific string, it returns a base form.
For each subsequent call to Morphy made with a 
.SB NULL 
string argument, Morphy returns another base form.  Whenever Morphy
cannot perform a transformation, whether on the first call for a word
or subsequent calls,
.SB NULL 
is returned.  A transformation to a valid English string will return 
.SB NULL
if the base form of the string is not in WordNet.

The morphological functions are found in the WordNet library.  See
.BR morph (3WN)
for information on using these functions.  
.SS Rules of Detachment
The following table shows the rules of detachment used by Morphy.  If
a word ends with one of the suffixes, it is stripped from the word and
the corresponding ending is added.  Then WordNet is searched for the
resulting string.  No rules are applicable to adverbs.

.TS
center, tab(+) ;
c | c | c
l | l | l.
\fBPOS\fP+\fBSuffix\fP+\fBEnding\fP
_
NOUN+"s"+""
NOUN+"ses"+"s"
NOUN+"xes"+"x"
NOUN+"zes"+"z"
NOUN+"ches"+"ch"
NOUN+"shes"+"sh"
NOUN+"men"+"man"
NOUN+"ies"+"y"
VERB+"s"+""
VERB+"ies"+"y"
VERB+"es"+"e"
VERB+"es"+""
VERB+"ed"+"e"
VERB+"ed"+""
VERB+"ing"+"e"
VERB+"ing"+""
ADJ+"er"+""
ADJ+"est"+""
ADJ+"er"+"e"
ADJ+"est"+"e"
.TE
.SS Exception Lists
There is one exception list file for each syntactic category.  The
exception lists contain the morphological transformations for strings
that are not regular and therefore cannot be processed in an
algorithmic manner.  Each line of an exception list contains an
inflected form of a word or collocation, followed by one or more base
forms.  The list is kept in alphabetical order and a binary search is
used to find words in these lists.  See
.BR wndb (5WN)
for information on the format of the exception list files.
.SS Single Words
In general, single words are relatively easy to process.  Morphy first
looks for the word in the exception list.  If it is found the first
base form is returned.  Subsequent calls with a
.SB NULL 
argument return additional base forms, if present.  A
.SB NULL
is returned when there are no more base forms of the word.

If the word is not found in the exception list corresponding to the
syntactic category, an algorithmic process using the rules of
detachment looks for a matching suffix.  If a matching suffix is
found, a corresponding ending is applied (sometimes this ending is a
.SB NULL
string, so in effect the suffix is removed from the word), and WordNet
is consulted to see if the resulting word is found in the desired part
of speech.
.SS Collocations
As opposed to single words, collocations can be quite difficult to
transform into a base form that is present in WordNet.  In general,
only base forms of words, even those comprising collocations, are
stored in WordNet, such as \fBattorney~general\fP.  Transforming the
collocation \fBattorneys~general\fP is then simply a matter of finding
the base forms of the individual words comprising the collocation.
This usually works for nouns, therefore non-conforming nouns, such as
\fBcustoms~duty\fP are presently entered in the noun exception list.

Verb collocations that contain prepositions, such as \fBask~for~it\fP,
are more difficult.  As with single words, the exception list is
searched first.  If the collocation is not found, special code in
Morphy determines whether a verb collocation includes a preposition.
If it does, a function is called to try to find the base form in the
following manner.  It is assumed that the first word in the
collocation is a verb and that the last word is a noun.  The algorithm
then builds a search string with the base forms of the verb and noun,
leaving the remainder of the collocation (usually just the
preposition, but more words may be involved) in the middle.  For
example, passed \fBasking~for~it\fP, the database search would be
performed with \fBask~for~it\fP, which is found in WordNet, and
therefore returned from Morphy.  If a verb collocation does not
contain a preposition, then the base form of each word in the
collocation is found and WordNet is searched for the resulting string.
.SS Hyphenation
Hyphenation also presents special difficulties when searching WordNet.
It is often a subjective decision as to whether a word is hyphenated,
joined as one word, or is a collocation of several words, and which of
the various forms are entered into WordNet.  When Morphy breaks a
string into "words", it looks for both spaces and hyphens as
delimiters.  It also looks for periods in strings and removes them if
an exact match is not found.  A search for an abbreviation like
\fBoct.\fP return the synset for \fB{~October,~Oct~}\fP.  Not every
pattern of hyphenated and collocated string is searched for properly,
so it may be advantageous to specify several search strings if the
results of a search attempt seem incomplete.
.SS Special Processing for nouns ending with 'ful'
Morphy contains code that searches for nouns ending with \fBful\fP
and performs a transformation on the substring preceeding it.  It then
appends 'ful' back onto the resulting string and returns it. For
example, if passed the nouns \fBboxesful\fP, it will return \fBboxful\fP.
.SH BUGS
Since many noun collocations contains prepositions, such as
\fBline~of~products\fP, an algorithm similar to that used for verbs
should be written for nouns.  In the present scheme, if Morphy is
passed \fBlines~of~products\fP, the search string becomes
\fBline~of~product\fP, which is not in WordNet

Morphy will allow non-words to be converted to words, if they follow
one of the rules described above.  For example, it will happily
convert \fBplantes\fP to \fBplants\fP.
.SH ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES (UNIX)
.TP 20
.B WNHOME
Base directory for WordNet.  Default is
\fB/usr/local/WordNet-3.0\fP.
.TP 20
.B WNSEARCHDIR
Directory in which the WordNet database has been installed.  
Default is \fBWNHOME/dict\fP.
.SH REGISTRY (WINDOWS)
.TP 20
.B HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\eSOFTWARE\eWordNet\e3.0\eWNHome
Base directory for WordNet.  Default is
\fBC:\eProgram~Files\eWordNet\e3.0\fP.
.SH FILES
.TP 20
.B \fIpos\fP.exc
morphology exception lists
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR wn (1WN),
.BR wnb (1WN),
.BR binsrch (3WN),
.BR morph (3WN),
.BR wndb (5WN),
.BR wninput (7WN).