morph (3) - Linux Manuals

morph: WordNet morphological processor functions

NAME

morphinit, re_morphinit, morphstr, morphword - WordNet morphological processor functions

SYNOPSIS

#include "wn.h"

int morphinit(void);

int re_morphinit(void);

char *morphstr(char *origstr, int pos);

char *morphword(char *word, int pos);

DESCRIPTION

The WordNet morphological processor, Morphy, is accessed through these functions:

morphinit() is used to open the exception list files. It returns 0 if successful, -1 otherwise. The exception list files must be opened before morphstr() or morphword() are called.

re_morphinit() is used to close the exception list files and reopen them, and is used exclusively for WordNet development. Return codes are as described above.

morphstr() is the basic user interface to Morphy. It tries to find the base form (lemma) of the word or collocation origstr in the specified pos. The first call (with origstr specified) returns a pointer to the first base form found. Subsequent calls requesting base forms of the same string must be made with the first argument of NULL. When no more base forms for origstr can be found, NULL is returned. Note that morphstr() returns a pointer to a static character buffer. A subsequent call to morphstr() with a new string (instead of NULL) will overwrite the string pointed to by a previous call. Users should copy the returned string into a local buffer, or use the C library function strdup to duplicate the returned string into a malloc'd buffer.

morphword() tries to find the base form of word in the specified pos. This function is called by morphstr() for each individual word in a collocation. Note that morphword() returns a pointer to a static character buffer. A subsequent call to morphword() will overwrite the string pointed to by a previous call. Users should copy the returned string into a local buffer, or use the C library function strdup to duplicate the returned string into a malloc'd buffer.

NOTES

morphinit() is called by wninit() and is not intended to be called directly by an application. Applications wishing to use WordNet and/or the morphological functions must call wninit() at the start of the program. See wnutil(3) for more information.

origstr may be either a word or a collocation formed by joining individual words with underscore characters (_).

Usually only morphstr() is called from applications, as it works on both words and collocations.

pos must be one of the following:

1       NOUN
2       VERB
3       ADJECTIVE
4       ADVERB
5       ADJECTIVE_SATELLITE

If ADJECTIVE_SATELLITE is passed, it is treated by morphstr() as ADJECTIVE.

WARNINGS

Passing an invalid part of speech will result in a core dump.

The WordNet database files must be open to use morphstr() or morphword().

BUGS

Morphy will allow non-words to be converted to words, if they follow one of the rules described above. For example, it will happily convert plantes to plants.