NAME

       link-generator - generate natural language sentences using Link Grammar

SYNOPSIS

       link-generator --help
       link-generator --version

DESCRIPTION

       link-generator  is  a command-line tool for generating random sentences whose syntax is determined by the
       specified link-grammar dictionary.

EXAMPLE

       link-generator

BACKGROUND

       The theory of Link Grammar is explained in many academic papers.  In the first of these,  Daniel  Sleator
       and  Davy  Temperley,  "Parsing  English  with  a  Link Grammar" (1991), the authors defined a new formal
       grammatical system called a "link grammar". A sequence of words is in the language of a link  grammar  if
       there  is  a way to draw "links" between words in such a way that the local requirements of each word are
       satisfied, the links do not cross, and the words form a consistent connected graph. The  authors  encoded
       English  grammar  into  such a system, and wrote the link-parser command-line tool to parse English using
       this grammar.

       The engine that performs the parsing is separate from the dictionaries describing a language.  Currently,
       the  most  fully  developed,  complete  dictionaries  are for the English and Russian languages, although
       experimental, incomplete dictionaries exist for German and eight other languages.

OVERVIEW

       link-generator generates sentences.

OPTIONS

       --help Print usage and exit.

       --version
              Print program version and configuration details, and exit.

       --usage
              Print a short synposis of the option flags.

       -l language|dict_location, --language=language|dict_location
              Specify the language to use, or the directory file-path to the dictionary to use.

       -s length, --length=length
              Specify the length of the sentences to generate. All generated sentences will  have  exactly  this
              length.

       -c count, --count=count
              Specify  the  number  of sentences to generate. If this number is less than the number of possible
              linkages, then a random subset of possible linkages will  be  generated,  and  one  representative
              sentence  for  each linkage will be printed. The words in the representative sentence are randomly
              chosen from the set of words associated with each disjunct  in  that  linkage.  If  the  count  is
              greater  than  the  number of possible linkages, then one representative sentence for each linkage
              will be printed.

              If the -x option is set, and if the count is greater than the number of  possible  linkages,  then
              more than one representative sentence will be printed for each linkage. Each sentence will consist
              of word choices drawn  randomly  from  the  set  of  words  associated  with  each  disjunct.   An
              approximately  equal  number  of  sentences will be printed for each linkage; if the count is high
              enough, then all possible word-choices will be printed. Note that  this  typically  results  in  a
              combinatorial explosion!

       -x, --explode
              If  set,  and  is  the  count  is greater than the number of possible linkages, then more than one
              sentence will be printed for each linkage. Each sentence will have a distinct  random  word-choice
              for that linkage.

SEE ALSO

       The  link-parser  is  a  command-line tool for parsing sentences. It provides some additional information
       about the link-grammar implementation.

       Information on the link-grammar shared-library API and the link types used in the parse is  available  at
       the AbiWord website ⟨http://www.abisource.com/projects/link-grammar/⟩.

       Peer-reviewed    papers    explaining    Link    Grammar    can   be   found   at   original   CMU   site
       ⟨http://www.link.cs.cmu.edu/link/papers⟩.

       The  source  code   of   link-generator   and   the   link-grammar   library   is   located   at   GitHub
       ⟨https://github.com/opencog/link-grammar⟩.

       The    mailing    list    for    Link    Grammar    discussion    is   at   link-grammar   Google   group
       ⟨http://groups.google.com/group/link-grammar?hl=en⟩.

AUTHOR

       The  link-grammar  library  were  written  by  Daniel  Sleator   <sleator@cs.cmu.edu>,   Davy   Temperley
       <dtemp@theory.esm.rochester.edu>,  and  John  Lafferty <lafferty@cs.cmu.edu>. The link-generator tool was
       created by Amir Plivatsky <amirpli_at_gmail.com>.

       This manual page was written by Ken Bloom <kbloom@gmail.com>, for the Debian project, and  updated  Linas
       Vepstas <linasvepstas@gmail.com>.