Provided by: libwordnet-querydata-perl_1.49-2_all 
NAME
WordNet::QueryData - direct perl interface to WordNet database
SYNOPSIS
use WordNet::QueryData;
my $wn = WordNet::QueryData->new( noload => 1);
print "Synset: ", join(", ", $wn->querySense("cat#n#7", "syns")), "\n";
print "Hyponyms: ", join(", ", $wn->querySense("cat#n#1", "hypo")), "\n";
print "Parts of Speech: ", join(", ", $wn->querySense("run")), "\n";
print "Senses: ", join(", ", $wn->querySense("run#v")), "\n";
print "Forms: ", join(", ", $wn->validForms("lay down#v")), "\n";
print "Noun count: ", scalar($wn->listAllWords("noun")), "\n";
print "Antonyms: ", join(", ", $wn->queryWord("dark#n#1", "ants")), "\n";
DESCRIPTION
WordNet::QueryData provides a direct interface to the WordNet database files. It requires
the WordNet package (http://www.cogsci.princeton.edu/~wn/). It allows the user direct
access to the full WordNet semantic lexicon. All parts of speech are supported and access
is generally very efficient because the index and morphical exclusion tables are loaded at
initialization. The module can optionally be used to load the indexes into memory for
extra-fast lookups.
USAGE
LOCATING THE WORDNET DATABASE
To use QueryData, you must tell it where your WordNet database is. There are two ways you
can do this: 1) by setting the appropriate environment variables, or 2) by passing the
location to QueryData when you invoke the "new" function.
QueryData knows about two environment variables, WNHOME and WNSEARCHDIR. If WNSEARCHDIR
is set, QueryData looks for WordNet data files there. Otherwise, QueryData looks for
WordNet data files in WNHOME/dict (WNHOME\dict on a PC). If WNHOME is not set, it
defaults to "/usr/local/WordNet-3.0" on Unix and "C:\Program Files\WordNet\3.0" on a PC.
Normally, all you have to do is to set the WNHOME variable to the location where you
unpacked your WordNet distribution. The database files are normally unpacked to the
"dict" subdirectory.
You can also pass the location of the database files directly to QueryData. To do this,
pass the location to "new":
my $wn = WordNet::QueryData->new("/usr/local/wordnet/dict");
You can instead call the constructor with a hash of params, as in:
my $wn = WordNet::QueryData->new(
dir => "/usr/local/wordnet/dict",
verbose => 0,
noload => 1
);
When calling "new" in this fashion, two additional arguments are supported; "verbose" will
output debugging information, and "noload" will cause the object to *not* load the indexes
at startup.
CACHING VERSUS NOLOAD
The "noload" option results in data being retrieved using a dictionary lookup rather than
caching the indexes in RAM. This method yields an immediate startup time but *slightly*
(though less than you might think) longer lookup time. For the curious, here are some
profile data for each method on a duo core intel mac, averaged seconds over 10000
iterations:
Caching versus noload times in seconds
noload => 1 noload => 0
------------------------------------------------------------------
new() 0.00001 2.55
queryWord("descending") 0.0009 0.0001
querySense("sunset#n#1", "hype") 0.0007 0.0001
validForms ("lay down#2") 0.0004 0.0001
Obviously the new() comparison is not very useful, because nothing is happening with the
constructor in the case of noload => 1. Similarly, lookups with caching are basically just
hash lookups, and therefore very fast. The lookup times for noload => 1 illustrate the
tradeoff between caching at new() time and using dictionary lookups.
Because of the lookup speed increase when noload => 0, many users will find it useful to
set noload to 1 during development cycles, and to 0 when RAM is less of a concern than
speed. The bottom line is that noload => 1 saves you over 2 seconds of startup time, and
costs you about 0.0005 seconds per lookup.
QUERYING THE DATABASE
There are two primary query functions, 'querySense' and 'queryWord'. querySense accesses
semantic (sense to sense) relations; queryWord accesses lexical (word to word) relations.
The majority of relations are semantic. Some relations, including "also see", antonym,
pertainym, "participle of verb", and derived forms are lexical. See the following WordNet
documentation for additional information:
http://wordnet.princeton.edu/man/wninput.5WN#sect3
Both functions take as their first argument a query string that takes one of three types:
(1) word (e.g. "dog")
(2) word#pos (e.g. "house#n")
(3) word#pos#sense (e.g. "ghostly#a#1")
Types (1) or (2) passed to querySense or queryWord will return a list of possible query
strings at the next level of specificity. When type (3) is passed to querySense or
queryWord, it requires a second argument, a relation. Relations generally only work with
one function or the other, though some relations can be either semantic or lexical; hence
they may work for both functions. Below is a list of known relations, grouped according
to the function they're most likely to work with:
queryWord
---------
also - also see
ants - antonyms
deri - derived forms (nouns and verbs only)
part - participle of verb (adjectives only)
pert - pertainym (pertains to noun) (adjectives only)
vgrp - verb group (verbs only)
querySense
----------
also - also see
glos - word definition
syns - synset words
hype - hypernyms
inst - instance of
hypes - hypernyms and "instance of"
hypo - hyponyms
hasi - has instance
hypos - hyponums and "has instance"
mmem - member meronyms
msub - substance meronyms
mprt - part meronyms
mero - all meronyms
hmem - member holonyms
hsub - substance holonyms
hprt - part holonyms
holo - all holonyms
attr - attributes (?)
sim - similar to (adjectives only)
enta - entailment (verbs only)
caus - cause (verbs only)
domn - domain - all
dmnc - domain - category
dmnu - domain - usage
dmnr - domain - region
domt - member of domain - all (nouns only)
dmtc - member of domain - category (nouns only)
dmtu - member of domain - usage (nouns only)
dmtr - member of domain - region (nouns only)
When called in this manner, querySense and queryWord will return a list of related
words/senses. Note that as of WordNet 2.1, many hypernyms have become "instance of" and
many hyponyms have become "has instance."
Note that querySense and queryWord use type (3) query strings in different ways. A type
(3) string passed to querySense specifies a synset. A type (3) string passed to queryWord
specifies a specific sense of a specific word.
OTHER FUNCTIONS
"validForms" accepts a type (1) or (2) query string. It returns a list of all alternate
forms (alternate spellings, conjugations, plural/singular forms, etc.). The type (1)
query returns alternates for all parts of speech (noun, verb, adjective, adverb).
WARNING: Only the first argument returned by validForms is certain to be valid (i.e.
recognized by WordNet). Remaining arguments may not be valid.
"listAllWords" accepts a part of speech and returns the full list of words in the WordNet
database for that part of speech.
"level" accepts a type (3) query string and returns a distance (not necessarily the
shortest or longest) to the root in the hypernym directed acyclic graph.
"offset" accepts a type (3) query string and returns the binary offset of that sense's
location in the corresponding data file.
"tagSenseCnt" accepts a type (2) query string and returns the tagsense_cnt value for that
lemma: "number of senses of lemma that are ranked according to their frequency of
occurrence in semantic concordance texts."
"lexname" accepts a type (3) query string and returns the lexname of the sense; see
WordNet lexnames man page for more information.
"frequency" accepts a type (3) query string and returns the frequency count of the sense
from tagged text; see WordNet cntlist man page for more information.
See test.pl for additional example usage.
NOTES
Requires access to WordNet database files (data.noun/noun.dat, index.noun/noun.idx, etc.)
COPYRIGHT
Copyright 2000-2005 Jason Rennie. All rights reserved.
This module is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same
terms as Perl itself.
SEE ALSO
perl(1)
http://wordnet.princeton.edu/
http://people.csail.mit.edu/~jrennie/WordNet/