Background and Introduction

Professor George Miller of the Cognitive Science Laboratory of Princeton University directed the development a lexicographic database called WordNet.

Princeton maintained a server through which the WordNet database could be browsed via the World Wide Web, however, the online version of WordNet has been deprecated and is no longer available, so if you would like to use WordNet in your research, you can download the database.

The WordNet database is implemented as a set of text files. Mark Nahabedian has developed an interface to this database written in Common Lisp. This software provides an interface by which Common Lisp programs can access lexicographic data from WordNet.

2 Min Overview

Some Exported Functions

A complete list can be found in packages.lisp with more documentation here.

wordnet

• synsets-containing-word/s
• get-synonyms
• get-antonyms
• synset-words
• part-of-speech
• cached-index-lookup
• index-entry-synsets

NOTE 1: A point of note is the part-of-speech. Arguments with this name can take the value :noun, :adjective, :verb or :adverb.

NOTE 2: I am not the author - these examples and explanations are all that I understand. There is more documentation available at the original repo - this is a forked one. Further, I have made part-of-speech as an optional argument in synsets-containing-word/s, and get-synonyms; the former function is named synsets-containing-words in the original repo.

Class Hierarchy

(wordnet-object ;; private
  (wordnet-synset-entry
    (wordnet-noun-entry
     wordnet-verb-entry
     wordnet-adjective-entry
     wordnet-adverb-entry)
  (wordnet-index-entry)
  (wordnet-pointer))

Examples

    CL-USER> (ql:quickload 'wordnet)
    (WORDNET)

    CL-USER> (use-package :wordnet)
    T

    CL-USER> (setq dog-synsets (synsets-containing-word/s "dog" :noun)
    ;; The first argument could be :dog or "dog" as well
    ;; The second argument is optional, if given, it could be :verb, :adverb or :adjective
    (#<WORDNET-NOUN-ENTRY dog domestic_dog Canis_familiaris  {1001CB36A3}>
     #<WORDNET-NOUN-ENTRY frump dog  {1001CB7FD3}>
     #<WORDNET-NOUN-ENTRY dog  {1001CBAAF3}>
     #<WORDNET-NOUN-ENTRY cad bounder blackguard dog hound heel  {1001CBF193}>
     #<WORDNET-NOUN-ENTRY frank frankfurter hotdog hot_dog dog wiener wienerwurst weenie    {1001CC4373}>
     #<WORDNET-NOUN-ENTRY pawl detent click dog  {1001CC8053}>
     #<WORDNET-NOUN-ENTRY andiron firedog dog dog-iron  {1001CCB733}>)

    CL-USER> (get-synonyms :joy) 
    ;; an optional argument specifying part-of-speech can also be supplied
    (("joy" 0) ("joyousness" 0) ("joyfulness" 0) ("joy" 0) ("delight" 0) 
     ("pleasure" 0))

    CL-USER> (get-antonyms 'joy :noun)
    ;; part-of-speech is not optional here 
    ("sorrow")

    ;;; ======== The above functions are implemented in examples.lisp ==========
    ;; The list of the exported functions can be found in packages.lisp.
    

    CL-USER> (synset-words (first dog-synsets))
    (("dog" 0) ("domestic_dog" 0) ("Canis_familiaris" 0))

    CL-USER> (part-of-speech (first dog-synsets))
    :NOUN

    CL-USER> (setq dog (cached-index-lookup 'dog :noun))
    #<WORDNET-INDEX-ENTRY NOUN dog {100298AD33}>    
    
    CL-USER> (setq dog-synsets (index-entry-synsets dog))
    (#<WORDNET-NOUN-ENTRY dog domestic_dog Canis_familiaris  {100291AAB3}>
     #<WORDNET-NOUN-ENTRY frump dog  {100291F3E3}>
     #<WORDNET-NOUN-ENTRY dog  {1002921F33}>
     #<WORDNET-NOUN-ENTRY cad bounder blackguard dog hound heel  {10029265D3}>
     #<WORDNET-NOUN-ENTRY frank frankfurter hotdog hot_dog dog wiener wienerwurst weenie        {100292B9F3}>
     #<WORDNET-NOUN-ENTRY pawl detent click dog  {100292F6D3}>
     #<WORDNET-NOUN-ENTRY andiron firedog dog dog-iron  {1002932DC3}>)