LINK-GENERATOR(1) General Commands Manual LINK-GENERATOR(1)
NAME
link-generator - generate natural language sentences using Link Grammar
SYNOPSIS
link-generator --help
link-generator --version
DESCRIPTION
link-generator is a command-line tool for generating random sentences
whose syntax is determined by the specified link-grammar dictionary.
EXAMPLE
link-generator
BACKGROUND
The theory of Link Grammar is explained in many academic papers. In
the first of these, Daniel Sleator and Davy Temperley, "Parsing English
with a Link Grammar" (1991), the authors defined a new formal
grammatical system called a "link grammar". A sequence of words is in
the language of a link grammar if there is a way to draw "links"
between words in such a way that the local requirements of each word
are satisfied, the links do not cross, and the words form a consistent
connected graph. The authors encoded English grammar into such a
system, and wrote the link-parser command-line tool to parse English
using this grammar.
The engine that performs the parsing is separate from the dictionaries
describing a language. Currently, the most fully developed, complete
dictionaries are for the English and Russian languages, although
experimental, incomplete dictionaries exist for German and eight other
languages.
OVERVIEW
link-generator generates sentences.
OPTIONS
--help Print usage and exit.
--version
Print program version and configuration details, and exit.
--usage
Print a short synopsis of the option flags.
-l language|dict_location, --language=language|dict_location
Specify the language to use, or the directory file-path to the
dictionary to use.
-s length, --length=length
If length is 0, read a sentence template. It may consist of
fully spelled-out words as well as wild-cards. The wild-card \*
represents any dictionary word. Wild-card specifications like
prefix\* and \*.n are also recognized.
Otherwise, it specifies the length of the sentences to generate.
All generated sentences will have exactly this length.
-c count, --count=count
Specify the number of sentences to generate. If this number is
less than the number of possible linkages, then a random subset
of possible linkages will be generated, and one representative
sentence for each linkage will be printed. The words in the
representative sentence are randomly chosen from the set of
words associated with each disjunct in that linkage. If the
count is greater than the number of possible linkages, then one
representative sentence for each linkage will be printed.
If the -x option is set, and if the count is greater than the
number of possible linkages, then more than one representative
sentence will be printed for each linkage. Each sentence will
consist of word choices drawn randomly from the set of words
associated with each disjunct. An approximately equal number of
sentences will be printed for each linkage; if the count is high
enough, then all possible word-choices will be printed. Note
that this typically results in a combinatorial explosion!
-x, --explode
If set, and is the count is greater than the number of possible
linkages, then more than one sentence will be printed for each
linkage. Each sentence will have a distinct random word-choice
for that linkage.
-d, --disjuncts
Display linkage disjuncts.
--no-walls
Don't attach to walls in wildcard words.
-r, --random
Use unrepeatable random numbers.
-u, --unused
Display unused disjuncts.
SEE ALSO
The link-parser is a command-line tool for parsing sentences. It
provides some additional information about the link-grammar
implementation.
Information on the link-grammar shared-library API and the link types
used in the parse is available at the AbiWord website
.
Peer-reviewed papers explaining Link Grammar can be found at original
CMU site .
The source code of link-generator and the link-grammar library is
located at GitHub .
The mailing list for Link Grammar discussion is at link-grammar Google
group .
AUTHOR
The link-grammar library were written by Daniel Sleator
, Davy Temperley ,
and John Lafferty . The link-generator tool was
created by Amir Plivatsky .
This manual page was written by Ken Bloom , for the
Debian project, and updated Linas Vepstas .
Version 5.9.0 2021-03-30 LINK-GENERATOR(1)