MORPH(3) WordNet™ Library Functions MORPH(3)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 subse‐
quent call to morphstr() with a new string (instead of NULL) will over‐
write 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 char‐
acter 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.
NOTESmorphinit() 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 pro‐
gram. See wnutil(3) for more information.
origstr may be either a word or a collocation formed by joining indi‐
vidual 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 ADJEC‐
TIVE.
SEE ALSOwnintro(3), wnsearch(3), wndb(5), morphy(7).
WARNINGS
Passing an invalid part of speech will result in a core dump.
The WordNet database files must be open to use morphstr() or mor‐
phword().
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.
WordNet 3.0 Dec 2006 MORPH(3)
