| '\" t |
| .\" $Id$ |
| .tr ~ |
| .TH WNDB 5WN "Dec 2006" "WordNet 3.0" "WordNet\(tm File Formats" |
| .SH NAME |
| index.noun, data.noun, index.verb, data.verb, index.adj, data.adj, index.adv, data.adv \- WordNet database files |
| .LP |
| noun.exc, verb.exc. adj.exc adv.exc \- morphology exception lists |
| .LP |
| sentidx.vrb, sents.vrb \- files used by search code to display |
| sentences illustrating the use of some specific verbs |
| .SH DESCRIPTION |
| For each syntactic category, two files are needed to represent the |
| contents of the WordNet database \- \fBindex.\fP\fIpos\fP and |
| \fBdata.\fP\fIpos\fP, where \fIpos\fP is \fBnoun\fP, \fBverb\fP, |
| \fBadj\fP and \fBadv\fP. The other auxiliary files are used by the |
| WordNet library's searching functions and are needed to run the |
| various WordNet browsers. |
|
|
| Each index file is an alphabetized list of all the words found in |
| WordNet in the corresponding part of speech. On each line, following |
| the word, is a list of byte offsets (\fIsynset_offset\fPs) in the |
| corresponding data file, one for each synset containing the word. |
| Words in the index file are in lower case only, regardless of how they |
| were entered in the lexicographer files. This folds various |
| orthographic representations of the word into one line enabling |
| database searches to be case insensitive. See |
| .BR wninput (5WN) |
| for a detailed description of the lexicographer files |
|
|
| A data file for a syntactic category contains information |
| corresponding to the synsets that were specified in the lexicographer |
| files, with relational pointers resolved to \fIsynset_offset\fPs. |
| Each line corresponds to a synset. Pointers are followed and |
| hierarchies traversed by moving from one synset to another via the |
| \fIsynset_offset\fPs. |
|
|
| The exception list files, \fIpos\fP\fB.exc\fP, are used to help the |
| morphological processor find base forms from irregular inflections. |
|
|
| The files \fBsentidx.vrb\fP and \fBsents.vrb\fP contain sentences |
| illustrating the use of specific senses of some verbs. These files |
| are used by the searching software in response to a request for verb |
| sentence frames. Generic sentence frames are displayed when an |
| illustrative sentence is not present. |
|
|
| The various database files are in ASCII formats that are easily read |
| by both humans and machines. All fields, unless otherwise noted, are |
| separated by one space character, and all lines are terminated by a |
| newline character. Fields enclosed in italicized square brackets may |
| not be present. |
|
|
| See |
| .BR wngloss (7WN) |
| for a glossary of WordNet terminology and a discussion of the |
| database's content and logical organization. |
| .SS Index File Format |
| Each index file begins with several lines containing a copyright |
| notice, version number and license agreement. These lines all begin |
| with two spaces and the line number so they do not interfere with the |
| binary search algorithm that is used to look up entries in the index |
| files. All other lines are in the following format. In the field |
| descriptions, \fBnumber\fP always refers to a decimal integer unless |
| otherwise defined. |
| |
| .nf |
| \fIlemma~~pos~~synset_cnt~~p_cnt~~[ptr_symbol...]~~sense_cnt~~tagsense_cnt ~~synset_offset~~[synset_offset...]\fP |
| .fi |
| |
| .TP 15 |
| .I lemma |
| lower case ASCII text of word or collocation. Collocations are formed |
| by joining individual words with an underscore (\fB_\fP) character. |
| .TP 15 |
| .I pos |
| Syntactic category: \fBn\fP for noun files, |
| \fBv\fP for verb files, \fBa\fP for adjective files, \fBr\fP for |
| adverb files. |
| |
| .LP |
| All remaining fields are with respect to senses of \fIlemma\fP in |
| \fIpos\fP. |
| |
| .TP 15 |
| .I synset_cnt |
| Number of synsets that \fIlemma\fP is in. This is the |
| number of senses of the word in WordNet. See |
| .SM \fBSense Numbers\fP |
| below for a discussion of how sense numbers are assigned and the order |
| of \fIsynset_offset\fPs in the index files. |
| .TP 15 |
| .I p_cnt |
| Number of different pointers that \fIlemma\fP has in all synsets |
| containing it. |
| .TP 15 |
| .I ptr_symbol |
| A space separated list of \fIp_cnt\fP different types of pointers that |
| \fIlemma\fP has in all synsets containing it. See |
| .BR wninput (5WN) |
| for a list of \fIpointer_symbol\fPs. If all senses of \fIlemma\fP |
| have no pointers, this field is omitted and \fIp_cnt\fP is \fB0\fP. |
| .TP 15 |
| .I sense_cnt |
| Same as \fIsense_cnt\fP above. This is redundant, but the field was |
| preserved for compatibility reasons. |
| .TP 15 |
| .I tagsense_cnt |
| Number of senses of \fIlemma\fP that are ranked according to |
| their frequency of occurrence in semantic concordance texts. |
| .TP 15 |
| .I synset_offset |
| Byte offset in \fBdata.\fIpos\fR file of a synset containing |
| \fIlemma\fP. Each \fIsynset_offset\fP in the list corresponds to a |
| different sense of \fIlemma\fP in WordNet. \fIsynset_offset\fP is an |
| 8 digit, zero-filled decimal integer that can be used with |
| .BR fseek (3) |
| to read a synset from the data file. When passed to |
| .BR read_synset (3WN) |
| along with the syntactic category, a data structure containing the |
| parsed synset is returned. |
| .SS Data File Format |
| Each data file begins with several lines containing a copyright |
| notice, version number and license agreement. These lines all begin |
| with two spaces and the line number. All other lines are in the |
| following format. Integer fields are of fixed length, and are |
| zero-filled. |
| |
| .nf |
| \fIsynset_offset~~lex_filenum~~ss_type~~w_cnt~~word~~lex_id~~[word~~lex_id...]~~p_cnt~~[ptr...]~~[frames...]~~\fB|\fP\fI~~gloss\fP |
| .fi |
| |
| .TP 15 |
| .I synset_offset |
| Current byte offset in the file represented as an 8 digit decimal |
| integer. |
| .TP 15 |
| .I lex_filenum |
| Two digit decimal integer corresponding to the lexicographer file name |
| containing the synset. See |
| .BR lexnames (5WN) |
| for the list of filenames and their corresponding numbers. |
| .TP 15 |
| .I ss_type |
| One character code indicating the synset type: |
| |
| .RS |
| .nf |
| \fBn\fP NOUN |
| \fBv\fP VERB |
| \fBa\fP ADJECTIVE |
| \fBs\fP ADJECTIVE SATELLITE |
| \fBr\fP ADVERB |
| .fi |
| .RE |
| .TP 15 |
| .I w_cnt |
| Two digit hexadecimal integer indicating the number of words in the |
| synset. |
| .TP 15 |
| .I word |
| ASCII form of a word as entered in the synset by the lexicographer, |
| with spaces replaced by underscore characters (\fB_\fP). The text of |
| the word is case sensitive, in contrast to its form in the |
| corresponding \fBindex.\fP\fIpos\fP file, that contains only |
| lower-case forms. In \fBdata.adj\fP, a \fIword\fP is followed by a |
| syntactic marker if one was specified in the lexicographer file. A |
| syntactic marker is appended, in parentheses, onto \fIword\fP without |
| any intervening spaces. See |
| .BR wninput (5WN) |
| for a list of the syntactic markers for adjectives. |
| .TP 15 |
| .I lex_id |
| One digit hexadecimal integer that, when appended onto \fIlemma\fP, |
| uniquely identifies a sense within a lexicographer file. \fIlex_id\fP |
| numbers usually start with \fB0\fP, and are incremented as additional |
| senses of the word are added to the same file, although there is no |
| requirement that the numbers be consecutive or begin with \fB0\fP. |
| Note that a value of \fB0\fP is the default, and therefore is not |
| present in lexicographer files. |
| .TP 15 |
| .I p_cnt |
| Three digit decimal integer indicating the number of pointers from |
| this synset to other synsets. If \fIp_cnt\fP is \fB000\fP the synset |
| has no pointers. |
| .TP 15 |
| .I ptr |
| A pointer from this synset to another. \fIptr\fP is of the form: |
| |
| .nf |
| \fIpointer_symbol~~synset_offset~~pos~~source/target\fR |
| .fi |
| |
| where \fIsynset_offset\fP is the byte offset of the target synset in |
| the data file corresponding to \fIpos\fP. |
| |
| The \fIsource/target\fP field distinguishes lexical and semantic |
| pointers. It is a four byte field, containing two two-digit |
| hexadecimal integers. The first two digits indicates the word number |
| in the current (source) synset, the last two digits indicate the word |
| number in the target synset. A value of \fB0000\fP means that |
| \fIpointer_symbol\fP represents a semantic relation between the |
| current (source) synset and the target synset indicated by |
| \fIsynset_offset\fP. |
| |
| A lexical relation between two words in different synsets is |
| represented by non-zero values in the source and target word numbers. |
| The first and last two bytes of this field indicate the word numbers |
| in the source and target synsets, respectively, between which the |
| relation holds. Word numbers are assigned to the \fIword\fP fields in |
| a synset, from left to right, beginning with \fB1\fP. |
| |
| See |
| .BR wninput (5WN) |
| for a list of \fIpointer_symbol\fPs, and semantic and lexical pointer |
| classifications. |
| .TP 15 |
| .I frames |
| In \fBdata.verb\fP only, a list of numbers corresponding to the |
| generic verb sentence frames for \fIword\fPs in the synset. |
| \fIframes\fP is of the form: |
| |
| .nf |
| \fIf_cnt~~\fP \fB+\fP \fI~~f_num~~w_num~~[\fP \fB+\fP \fI~~f_num~~w_num...]\fP |
| .fi |
| |
| where \fIf_cnt\fP a two digit decimal integer indicating the number of |
| generic frames listed, \fIf_num\fP is a two digit decimal integer |
| frame number, and \fIw_num\fP is a two digit hexadecimal integer |
| indicating the word in the synset that the frame applies to. As with |
| pointers, if this number is \fB00\fP, \fIf_num\fP applies to all |
| \fIword\fPs in the synset. If non-zero, it is applicable only to the |
| word indicated. Word numbers are assigned as described for pointers. |
| Each \fIf_num~~w_num\fP pair is preceded by a \fB+\fP. |
| See |
| .BR wninput (5WN) |
| for the text of the generic sentence frames. |
| .TP |
| .I gloss |
| Each synset contains a gloss. A \fIgloss\fP is represented as a |
| vertical bar (\fB|\fP), followed by a text string that continues until |
| the end of the line. The gloss may contain a definition, one or more |
| example sentences, or both. |
| .SS Sense Numbers |
| Senses in WordNet are generally ordered from most to least frequently |
| used, with the most common sense numbered \fB1\fP. Frequency of use is |
| determined by the number of times a sense is tagged in the various |
| semantic concordance texts. Senses that are not semantically tagged |
| follow the ordered senses. The \fItagsense_cnt\fP field for each |
| entry in the \fBindex.\fIpos\fR files indicates how many of the senses |
| in the list have been tagged. |
| |
| The |
| .BR cntlist (5WN) |
| file provided with the database lists the number of times each sense |
| is tagged in the semantic concordances. The data from \fBcntlist\fP |
| is used by |
| .BR grind (1WN) |
| to order the senses of each word. When the \fBindex\fP.\fIpos\fP |
| files are generated, the \fIsynset_offset\fPs are output in sense |
| number order, with sense 1 first in the list. Senses with the same |
| number of semantic tags are assigned unique but consecutive sense |
| numbers. The WordNet |
| .SB OVERVIEW |
| search displays all senses of the |
| specified word, in all syntactic categories, and indicates which of |
| the senses are represented in the semantically tagged texts. |
| .SS Exception List File Format |
| Exception lists are alphabetized lists of inflected forms of words and |
| their base forms. The first field of each line is an inflected form, |
| followed by a space separated list of one or more base forms of the |
| word. There is one exception list file for each syntactic category. |
| |
| Note that the noun and verb exception lists were automatically |
| generated from a machine-readable dictionary, and contain many words |
| that are not in WordNet. Also, for many of the inflected forms, base |
| forms could be easily derived using the standard rules of detachment |
| programmed into Morphy (See |
| .BR morph (7WN)). |
| These anomalies are allowed to remain in the exception list files, |
| as they do no harm. |
| |
| .SS Verb Example Sentences |
| For some verb senses, example sentences illustrating the use of the |
| verb sense can be displayed. Each line of the file \fBsentidx.vrb\fP |
| contains a \fIsense_key\fP followed by a space and a comma separated |
| list of example sentence template numbers, in decimal. The file |
| \fBsents.vrb\fP lists all of the example sentence templates. Each |
| line begins with the template number followed by a space. The rest of |
| the line is the text of a template example sentence, with \fB%s\fP |
| used as a placeholder in the text for the verb. Both files are sorted |
| alphabetically so that the \fIsense_key\fP and template sentence |
| number can be used as indices, via |
| .BR binsrch (3WN), |
| into the appropriate file. |
| |
| When a request for |
| .SB FRAMES |
| is made, the WordNet search code looks |
| for the sense in \fBsentidx.vrb\fP. If found, the sentence |
| template(s) listed is retrieved from \fBsents.vrb\fP, and the \fB%s\fP |
| is replaced with the verb. If the sense is not found, the applicable |
| generic sentence frame(s) listed in \fIframes\fP is displayed. |
| .SH NOTES |
| Information in the \fBdata.\fIpos\fR and \fBindex.\fIpos\fR files |
| represents all of the word senses and synsets in the WordNet database. |
| The \fIword\fP, \fIlex_id\fP, and \fIlex_filenum\fP fields together |
| uniquely identify each word sense in WordNet. These can be encoded in |
| a \fIsense_key\fP as described in |
| .BR senseidx (5WN). |
| Each synset in the database can be uniquely identified by combining |
| the \fIsynset_offset\fP for the synset with a code for the syntactic |
| category (since it is possible for synsets in different |
| \fBdata.\fIpos\fR files to have the same \fIsynset_offset\fP). |
| |
| The WordNet system provide both command line and window-based browser |
| interfaces to the database. Both interfaces utilize a common library |
| of search and morphology code. The source code for the library and |
| interfaces is included in the WordNet package. See |
| .BR wnintro (3WN) |
| for an overview of the WordNet source code. |
| .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 index.\fIpos\fP |
| database index files |
| .TP 20 |
| .B data.\fIpos\fP |
| database data files |
| .TP 20 |
| .B *.vrb |
| files of sentences illustrating the use of verbs |
| .TP 20 |
| .B \fIpos\fP.exc |
| morphology exception lists |
| .SH SEE ALSO |
| .BR grind (1WN), |
| .BR wn (1WN), |
| .BR wnb (1WN), |
| .BR wnintro (3WN), |
| .BR binsrch (3WN), |
| .BR wnintro (5WN), |
| .BR cntlist (5WN), |
| .BR lexnames (5WN), |
| .BR senseidx (5WN), |
| .BR wninput (5WN), |
| .BR morphy (7WN), |
| .BR wngloss (7WN), |
| .BR wngroups (7WN), |
| .BR wnstats (7WN). |
| |
