NAME¶
index.sense, sense.idx - WordNet's sense index
DESCRIPTION¶
The WordNet sense index provides an alternate method for accessing synsets and
word senses in the WordNet database. It is useful to applications that
retrieve synsets or other information related to a specific sense in WordNet,
rather than all the senses of a word or collocation. It can also be used with
tools like
grep and Perl to find all senses of a word in one or more
parts of speech. A specific WordNet sense, encoded as a
sense_key, can
be used as an index into this file to obtain its WordNet sense number, the
database byte offset of the synset containing the sense, and the number of
times it has been tagged in the semantic concordance texts.
Concatenating the
lemma and
lex_sense fields of a semantically
tagged word (represented in a
<wf ...
> attribute/value
pair) in a semantic concordance file, using
% as the concatenation
character, creates the
sense_key for that sense, which can in turn be
used to search the sense index file.
A
sense_key is the best way to represent a sense in semantic tagging or
other systems that refer to WordNet senses.
sense_keys are independent
of WordNet sense numbers and
synset_offsets, which vary between
versions of the database. Using the sense index and a
sense_key, the
corresponding synset (via the
synset_offset) and WordNet sense number
can easily be obtained. A mapping from noun
sense_keys in WordNet 1.6
to corresponding 2.0
sense_keys is provided with version 2.0, and is
described in
sensemap(5WN).
See
wndb(5WN) for a thorough discussion of the WordNet database files.
The sense index file lists all of the senses in the WordNet database with each
line representing one sense. The file is in alphabetical order, fields are
separated by one space, and each line is terminated with a newline character.
Each line is of the form:
sense_key synset_offset sense_number
tag_cnt
sense_key is an encoding of the word sense. Programs can construct a
sense key in this format and use it as a binary search key into the sense
index file. The format of a
sense_key is described below.
synset_offset is the byte offset that the synset containing the sense is
found at in the database "data" file corresponding to the part of
speech encoded in the
sense_key.
synset_offset is an 8 digit,
zero-filled decimal integer, and can be used with
fseek(3) to read a
synset from the data file. When passed to the WordNet library function
read_synset() along with the syntactic category, a data structure
containing the parsed synset is returned.
sense_number is a decimal integer indicating the sense number of the
word, within the part of speech encoded in
sense_key, in the WordNet
database. See
wndb(5WN) for information about how sense numbers are
assigned.
tag_cnt represents the decimal number of times the sense is tagged in
various semantic concordance texts. A
tag_cnt of
0 indicates
that the sense has not been semantically tagged.
Sense Key Encoding¶
A
sense_key is represented as:
lemma%lex_sense
where
lex_sense is encoded as:
ss_type:lex_filenum:lex_id:head_word:head_id
lemma is the ASCII text of the word or collocation as found in the
WordNet database index file corresponding to
pos.
lemma is in
lower case, and collocations are formed by joining individual words with an
underscore (
_) character.
ss_type is a one digit decimal integer representing the synset type for
the sense. See
Synset Type below for a listing of the
numbers corresponding to each synset type.
lex_filenum is a two digit decimal integer representing the name of the
lexicographer file containing the synset for the sense. See
lexnames(5WN) for the list of lexicographer file names and their
corresponding numbers.
lex_id is a two digit decimal integer that, when appended onto
lemma, uniquely identifies a sense within a lexicographer file.
lex_id numbers usually start with
00, and are incremented as
additional senses of the word are added to the same file, although there is no
requirement that the numbers be consecutive or begin with
00. Note that
a value of
00 is the default, and therefore is not present in
lexicographer files. Only non-default
lex_id values must be explicitly
assigned in lexicographer files. See
wninput(5WN) for information on
the format of lexicographer files.
head_word is only present if the sense is in an adjective satellite
synset. It is the lemma of the first word of the satellite's head synset.
head_id is a two digit decimal integer that, when appended onto
head_word, uniquely identifies the sense of
head_word within a
lexicographer file, as described for
lex_id. There is a value in this
field only if
head_word is present.
Synset Type¶
The synset type is encoded as follows:
1 NOUN
2 VERB
3 ADJECTIVE
4 ADVERB
5 ADJECTIVE SATELLITE
NOTES¶
For non-satellite senses the
head_word and
head_id fields have no
values, however the field separator character (
:) is present.
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:\Program
Files\WordNet\3.0.
FILES¶
- index.sense
- sense index
SEE ALSO¶
binsrch(3WN),
wnsearch(3WN),
lexnames(5WN),
wnintro(5WN),
sensemap(5WN),
wndb(5WN),
wninput(5WN).
