WN(1WN) WordNet™ User Commands WN(1WN)NAMEwn - command line interface to WordNet lexical database
SYNOPSISwn [ searchstr ] [ -h] [ -g ] [ -a ] [ -l ] [ -o ] [ -s ] [ -n# ] [
search_option... ]
DESCRIPTIONwn() provides a command line interface to the WordNet database, allow‐
ing synsets and relations to be displayed as formatted text. For each
word, different searches are provided, based on syntactic category and
pointer types. Although only base forms of words are usually stored in
WordNet, users may search for inflected forms. A morphological process
is applied to the search string to generate a form that is present in
WordNet.
The command line interface is often useful when writing scripts to
extract information from the WordNet database. Post-processing of the
output with various scripting tools can reformat the results as
desired.
OPTIONS-h Print help text before search results.
-g Display textual glosses associated with synsets.
-a Display lexicographer file information.
-o Display synset offset of each synset.
-s Display each word's sense numbers in synsets.
-l Display the WordNet copyright notice, version number,
and license.
-n# Perform search on sense number # only.
-over Display overview of all senses of searchstr in all syn‐
tactic categories.
Search Options
Note that the last letter of search_option generally denotes the part
of speech that the search applies to: n for nouns, v for verbs, a for
adjectives, and r for adverbs. Multiple searches may be done for
searchstr with a single command by specifying all the appropriate
search options.
-syns(n | v | a | r)
Display synonyms and immediate hypernyms of synsets con‐
taining searchstr. Synsets are ordered by estimated
frequency of use. For adjectives, if searchstr is in a
head synset, the cluster's satellite synsets are dis‐
played in place of hypernyms. If searchstr is in a
satellite synset, its head synset is also displayed.
-simsv Display verb synonyms and immediate hypernyms of synsets
containing searchstr. Synsets are grouped by similarity
of meaning.
-ants(n | v | a | r)
Display synsets containing antonyms of searchstr. For
adjectives, if searchstr is in a head synset, searchstr
has a direct antonym. The head synset for the direct
antonym is displayed along with the direct antonym's
satellite synsets. If searchstr is in a satellite
synset, searchstr has an indirect antonym via the head
synset, which is displayed.
-faml(n | v | a | r)
Display familiarity and polysemy information for search‐
str.
-hype(n | v) Recursively display hypernym (superordinate) tree for
searchstr (searchstr IS A KIND OF _____ relation).
-hypo(n | v) Display immediate hyponyms (subordinates) for searchstr
(_____ IS A KIND OF searchstr relation).
-tree(n | v) Display hyponym (subordinate) tree for searchstr. This
is a recursive search that finds the hyponyms of each
hyponym.
-coor(n | v) Display the coordinates (sisters) of searchstr. This
search prints the immediate hypernym for each synset
that contains searchstr and the hypernym's immediate
hyponyms.
-deri(n | v) Display derivational morphology links between noun and
verb forms.
-domn(n | v | a | r)
Display domain that searchstr has been classified in.
-domt(n | v | a | r)
Display all terms classified as members of the search‐
str's domain.
-subsn Display substance meronyms of searchstr (HAS SUBSTANCE
relation).
-partn Display part meronyms of searchstr (HAS PART relation).
-membn Display member meronyms of searchstr (HAS MEMBER rela‐
tion).
-meron Display all meronyms of searchstr (HAS PART, HAS MEMBER,
HAS SUBSTANCE relations).
-hmern Display meronyms for searchstr tree. This is a recur‐
sive search that prints all the meronyms of searchstr
and all of its hypernyms.
-sprtn Display part of holonyms of searchstr (PART OF rela‐
tion).
-smemn Display member of holonyms of searchstr (MEMBER OF rela‐
tion).
-ssubn Display substance of holonyms of searchstr (SUBSTANCE OF
relation).
-holon Display all holonyms of searchstr (PART OF, MEMBER OF,
SUBSTANCE OF relations).
-hholn Display holonyms for searchstr tree. This is a recur‐
sive search that prints all the holonyms of searchstr
and all of each holonym's holonyms.
-entav Display entailment relations of searchstr.
-framv Display applicable verb sentence frames for searchstr.
-causv Display cause to relations of searchstr.
-pert(a | r) Display pertainyms of searchstr.
-attr(n | a) Display adjective values for noun attribute, or noun
attributes of adjective values.
-grep(n | v | a | r)
List compound words containing searchstr as a substring.
SEARCH RESULTS
The results of a search are written to the standard output. For each
search, the output consists a one line description of the search, fol‐
lowed by the search results.
All searches other than -over list all senses matching the search
results in the following general format. Items enclosed in italicized
square brackets ([ ... ]) may not be present.
One line listing the number of senses matching the search
request.
Each sense matching the search requested displayed as follows:
Sense n
[{synset_offset}] [<lex_filename>] word1[#sense_number][, word2...]
Where n is the sense number of the search word, synset_offset is
the byte offset of the synset in the data.pos file corresponding
to the syntactic category, lex_filename is the name of the lexi‐
cographer file that the synset comes from, word1 is the first
word in the synset (note that this is not necessarily the search
word) and sense_number is the WordNet sense number assigned to
the preceding word. synset_offset, lex_filename, and sense_num‐
ber are generated when the -o, -a, and -s options, respectively,
are specified.
The synsets matching the search requested are printed below each
sense's synset output described above. Each line of output is
preceded by a marker (usually =>), then a synset, formatted as
described above. If a search traverses more one level of the
tree, then successive lines are indented by spaces corresponding
to its level in the hierarchy. When the -g option is specified,
synset glosses are displayed in parentheses at the end of each
synset. Each synset is printed on one line.
Senses are generally ordered from most to least frequently used,
with the most common sense numbered 1. Frequency of use is
determined by the number of times a sense is tagged in the vari‐
ous semantic concordance texts. Senses that are not semanti‐
cally tagged follow the ordered senses. Note that this ordering
is only an estimate based on usage in a small corpus.
Verb senses can be grouped by similarity of meaning, rather than
ordered by frequency of use. The -simsv search prints all
senses that are close in meaning together, with a line of dashes
indicating the end of a group. See wngroups(7WN) for a discus‐
sion of how senses are grouped.
The -over search displays an overview of all the senses of the
search word in all syntactic categories. The results of this
search are similar to the -syns search, however no additional
(ex. hypernym) synsets are displayed, and synset glosses are
always printed. The senses are grouped by syntactic category,
and each synset is annotated as described above with synset_off‐
set, lex_filename, and sense_number as dictated by the -o, -a,
and -s options. The overview search also indicates how many of
the senses in each syntactic category are represented in the
tagged texts. This is a way for the user to determine whether a
sense's sense number is based on semantic tagging data, or was
arbitrarily assigned. For each sense that has appeared in such
texts, the number of semantic tags to that sense are indicated
in parentheses after the sense number.
If a search cannot be performed on some senses of searchstr, the
search results are headed by a string of the form:
X of Y senses of searchstr
The output of the -deri search shows word forms that are morpho‐
logically related to searchstr. Each word form pointed to from
searchstr is displayed, preceded by RELATED TO-> and the syntac‐
tic category of the link, followed, on the next line, by its
synset. Printed after the word form is #n where n indicates the
WordNet sense number of the term pointed to.
The -domn and -domt searches show the domain that a synset has
been classified in and, conversely, all of the terms that have
been assigned to a specific domain. A domain is either a TOPIC,
REGION or USAGE, as reflected in the specific pointer character
stored in the database, and displayed in the output. A -domn
search on a term shows the domain, if any, that each synset con‐
taining searchstr has been classified in. The output display
shows the domain type (TOPIC, REGION or USAGE), followed by the
syntactic category of the domain synset and the terms in the
synset. Each term is followed by #n where n indicates the Word‐
Net sense number of the term. The converse search, -domt, shows
all of the synsets that have been placed into the domain search‐
str, with analogous markers.
When -framv is specified, sample illustrative sentences and
generic sentence frames are displayed. If a sample sentence is
found, the base form of search is substituted into the sentence,
and it is printed below the synset, preceded with the EX:
marker. When no sample sentences are found, the generic sen‐
tence frames are displayed. Sentence frames that are acceptable
for all words in a synset are preceded by the marker *>. If a
frame is acceptable for the search word only, it is preceded by
the marker =>.
Search results for adjectives are slightly different from those
for other parts of speech. When an adjective is printed, its
direct antonym, if it has one, is also printed in parentheses.
When searchstr is in a head synset, all of the head synset's
satellites are also displayed. The position of an adjective in
relation to the noun may be restricted to the prenominal, post‐
nominal or predicative position. Where present, these restric‐
tions are noted in parentheses.
When an adjective is a participle of a verb, the output indi‐
cates the verb and displays its synset.
When an adverb is derived from an adjective, the specific adjec‐
tival sense on which it is based is indicated.
The morphological transformations performed by the search code
may result in more than one word to search for. WordNet auto‐
matically performs the requested search on all of the strings
and returns the results grouped by word. For example, the verb
saw is both the present tense of saw and the past tense of see.
When passed searchstr saw, WordNet performs the desired search
first on saw and next on see, returning the list of saw senses
and search results, followed by those for see.
EXIT STATUSwn() normally exits with the number of senses displayed. If searchword
is not found in WordNet, it exits with 0.
If the WordNet database cannot be opened, an error messages is dis‐
played and wn() exits with -1.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES (UNIX)
WNHOME Base directory for WordNet. Default is
/usr/local/WordNet-3.0.
WNSEARCHDIR Directory in which the WordNet database has been
installed. Default is WNHOME/dict.
REGISTRY (WINDOWS)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WordNet\3.0\WNHome
Base directory for WordNet. Default is C:\Pro‐
gram Files\WordNet\3.0.
FILES
index.pos database index files
data.pos database data files
*.vrb files of sentences illustrating the use of verbs
pos.exc morphology exception lists
SEE ALSOwnintro(1WN), wnb(1WN), wnintro(3WN), lexnames(5WN), senseidx(5WN)wndb(5WN), wninput(5WN), morphy(7WN), wngloss(7WN), wngroups(7WN).
BUGS
Please report bugs to wordnet@princeton.edu.
WordNet 3.0 Dec 2006 WN(1WN)
