How do I print out just the word itself in a WordNet synset using Python NLTK?

6
votes

Is there a way in Python 2.7 using NLTK to just get the word and not the extra formatting that includes "synset" and the parentheses and the "n.01" etc?

For instance if I do 

        wn.synsets('dog')

My results look like: 

[Synset('dog.n.01'), Synset('frump.n.01'), Synset('dog.n.03'), Synset('cad.n.01'), Synset('frank.n.02'), Synset('pawl.n.01'), Synset('andiron.n.01'), Synset('chase.v.01')]

How can I instead get a list like this?

dog
frump
cad
frank
pawl
andiron
chase

Is there a way to do this using NLTK or do I have to use regular expressions? Can I use regular expressions within a python script?

4
pythonregexnltkwordnet
As per rule includes "synset" and the parentheses and the "n.01" frank and chase should not be part of the desired output? - Braj
unrelated to the question but frank is a synonym/shorthand for frankfurter which is a synonym for hot dog or dog. Similarly dog as a verb means to chase. - aelfric5578
I see a faintly ironic failure to meet subtly ironic hues... - Christos Hayward

4 Answers

4
votes

If you want to do this without regular expressions, you can use a list comprehension.

[synset.name.split('.')[0] for synset in wn.synsets('dog') ]

What you're doing here is saying that, for each synset return the first word before the period.

4
votes

Try this:

for synset in wn.synsets('dog'):
    print synset.lemmas[0].name

You want to iterate over each synset for dog, and then print out the headword of the synset. Keep in mind that multiple words could attach to the same synset, so if you want to get all the words associated with all the synsets for dog, you could do:

for synset in wn.synsets('dog'):
    for lemma in synset.lemmas:
        print lemma.name
1
votes

Using lemma name might work but there is a canonical variable for the synset name for the Synset object, try:

>>> from nltk.corpus import wordnet as wn
>>> wn.synset('dog.n.1')
Synset('dog.n.01')
>>> wn.synset('dog.n.1').name
'dog.n.01'
>>> wn.synset('dog.n.1').name.partition('.')[0]
'dog'
>>> for ss in wn.synsets('dog'):
...     print ss.name.partition('.')[0]
... 
dog
frump
dog
cad
frank
pawl
andiron
chase
0
votes

it is very simple just create a list and then get the first value

from nltk.corpus import wordnet as wn
syn=[]
for s in wn.synsets('dog'):
   syn.appned(s)
return syn[0]