WN(1WN)

NAME
wn - command line interface to WordNet lexical database

SYNOPSIS
wn [ searchstr ] [ -h] [ -g ] [ -a ] [ -l ] [ -o ] [ -s ] [ -n# ] [ search_option... ]

DESCRIPTION
wn() provides a command line interface to the WordNet database, allowing 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. Simple post-processing of the output can reformat the results as desired. For example, the command line interface is called by Princeton's World Wide Web Wordnet interface.

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 syntactic 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 containing searchstr. Synsets are ordered by frequency of use. For adjectives, if searchstr is in a head synset, the cluster's satellite synsets are displayed 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 searchstr.

-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.

-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 relation).

-meron
    Display all meronyms of searchstr (HAS PART, HAS MEMBER, HAS SUBSTANCE relations).

-hmern
    Display meronyms for searchstr tree. This is a recursive search that prints all the meronyms of searchstr and all of its hypernyms.

-sprtn
    Display part of holonyms of searchstr (PART OF relation).

-smemn
    Display member of holonyms of searchstr (MEMBER OF relation).

-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 recursive 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, followed 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 lexicographer 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_number 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 various semantic concordance texts. Senses that are not semantically tagged follow the ordered senses. 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 discussion 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_offset, 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 randomly 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
    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 sentence 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, postnominal or predicative position. Where present, these restrictions are noted in parentheses. When an adjective is a participle of a verb, the output indicates the verb and displays its synset. When an adverb is derived from an adjective, the specific adjectival 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 automatically 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 STATUS
wn() 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 displyed and wn() exits with -1.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

WNHOME
    Base directory for WordNet. Unix default is /usr/local/wordnet1.7, PC default is C:\wn16.

WNSEARCHDIR
    Directory in which the WordNet database has been installed. Unix default is WNHOME/dict, PC default is WNHOME\dict.

FILES
All files are in the directory WNSEARCHDIR.

index.pos
    database index files (Unix and Macintosh)

pos.idx
    database index files (PC)

data.pos
    database data files (Unix and Macintosh)

pos.dat
    database data files (PC)

cousin.*
    files used to group similar senses

*.vrb
    files of sentences illustrating the use of verbs

pos.exc
    morphology exception lists

SEE ALSO
wnintro(3WN), lexnames(5WN), senseidx(5WN) wndb(5WN), wninput(5WN), morphy(7WN), wngloss(7WN), wngroups(7WN).

BUGS
Please report bugs to wordnet@princeton.edu.