MMORPH(1)

📦 version 2.3.4.2, in ubuntu jammy

💖 MMORPH(1) 💖 — General Commands Manual, but make it a group chat

okay bestie, so this is the manual page for mmorph — the MULTEXT morphology tool — straight out of the General Commands Manual (section 1, obviously, the commands section, iykyk). It's long, so this is part 1 of 2. Buckle up 🎀

🦋 NAME 🦋

mmorph — the MULTEXT morphology tool 💅

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

okay so there are six whole vibes you can run this thing in, and the synopsis is literally just "pick your flavor":

information:
       mmorph [ -vh ]

parse only:
       mmorph -y | -z [ -a addfile ]
       -m morphfile [ -d debug_map ] [ -l logfile ] [ infile [ outfile ]]

generate:
       mmorph -c | -n [ -t trace_level ] [ -s trace_level ] [ -a addfile ]
       -m morphfile [ -d debug_map ] [ -l logfile ] [ infile [ outfile ]]

simple lookup:
       mmorph [ -fi ] [ -b | -k ] [ -r rejectfile ]
       -m morphfile [ -d debug_map ] [ -l logfile ] [ infile [ outfile ]]

record/field lookup:
       mmorph -C classes [ -fU ] [ -E | -O ] [ -b | [ -k ] [ -B class ]]
       -m morphfile [ -d debug_map ] [ -l logfile ] [ infile [ outfile ]]

dump database:
       mmorph -p | -q
       -m morphfile [ -d debug_map ] [ -l logfile ] [ infile [ outfile ]]

like, yes, there are some brackets in brackets in there. that's not a typo, that's just the drama. periodt. 💅

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

In the simplest mode of operation, with just the -m morphfile option, mmorph operates in lookup mode: it will open an existing database called morphfile.db and lookup all the string segments (usually corresponding to words) in the input.

To create the database from the lexical entries specified in "morphfile", use -c -m morphfile. The file morphfile.db should not exist. When the database is complete it will lookup the segments in the input. If used interactively (input and output is a terminal), a prompt is printed when the program expects the user to type a segment string. No prompting occurs in record/field mode.

To test the rule applications on the lexical entries specified in morphfile, without creating a database and without looking up segments, use -n -m morphfile. This automatically sets the trace level to 1 if it was not specified.

In order to do the same operations as above, but on the alternate set of lexical entries in addfile, use the extra option -a addfile. The lexical entries in morphfile will be ignored. This is useful when making additions to a standard morphological description. Be aware that entries added to the database morphfile.db do not replace existing ones. 🙈

🧪 How to test a morphological description

Use the -n option. In the Grammar section, specify goal rules that will match the desired results. In the Lexicon section specify the lexical items you want to test. When running all rules will be applied (recursively) to the lexical items, if the rule is a goal, then the result of the application is printed on the output.

Suggestion: Put the two parts mentioned above (goal rules and Lexicon section) in separate files and reference these files with an #include directive where they should occur in the main input file. 🫶

If you are using an existing description and want to test only new lexical entries, use the options -n -a addfile, and put the lexical entries in addfile.

💅 OPTIONS 💅

  • -a addfile — Ignore lexical entries in morphfile, take them from addfile instead.
  • -B class — Specifies the record class that occurs before the beginning of a sentence. Capitalized words occurring just after such records will also be looked up with all their letters converted to lowercase (according to LC_CTYPE, see below).
  • -b — fold case before lookup. Uppercase letters are converted to lowercase letters (according to LC_CTYPE, see below) before a word is looked up.
  • -C classes — Determines record/field mode. Specifies the record classes that should be looked up. Class names should be separated by comma ",", TAB, space, bar "|" or backslash "\".
  • -c — Create a new database for lookup. The name of the created file is the name of morphfile (-m option) with suffix .db. It should not exist; if it exists the user should remove it manually before running mmorph -c (this is a minimal protection against accidental overwriting a database that might have taken a long time to create). 🫣
  • -d debug_map — Specify which debug options are wanted. Each bit in debug_map corresponds to an option.
    • no bits — decimal 0, hexadecimal 0x0 — no debug option (default)
    • bit 1 — decimal 1, hexadecimal 0x1 — debug initialisation
    • bit 2 — decimal 2, hexadecimal 0x2 — debug yacc parsing
    • bit 3 — decimal 4, hexadecimal 0x4 — debug rule combination
    • bit 4 — decimal 8, hexadecimal 0x8 — debug spelling application
    • bit 5 — decimal 16, hexadecimal 0x10 — print statistics with -p or -q options
    • all bits — decimal -1, hexadecimal 0xffff — all debug options whatever they are

To combine options add the decimal or hexadecimal values together. Example: -t 0x5 specifies bits (options) 1 and 4.

  • -E — In record/field mode, extends the morphology annotations if they already exist (the default is to leave existing annotations as is).
  • -O — In record/field mode, overwrite the morphology annotations if they already exist (the default is to leave existing annotations as is).
  • -f — Flush the output after each segment lookup. This is useful only if input and output are piped from and to a program that needs to synchronize them.
  • -h — Print help and exit.
  • -i — Prepend the result of each lookup with the identifier of the input segment it corresponds to. Currently input segments are identified by their sequential number, starting at 0. With this indication, the extra newline separating the solutions for different input segments is not printed because it is not needed. If a lookup has no solutions, only the segment identifier is printed on the output. The segment identifier is also prepended to rejected segments. A tab always follows the segment identifier.
  • -k — fallback fold case. If a word lookup failed, then convert all uppercase letters to lowercase and try lookup again. (conversion is done according to LC_CTYPE, see below).
  • -l logfile — Specify the file for writing trace and error messages. Defaults to standard error.
  • -m morphfile — Specify the file containing the morphology description. See mmorph (5) for a description of the formalism's syntax.
  • -n — No database creation or lookup (test mode).
  • -p — Dump the typed feature structure database to outfile (or standard output). The count of distinct tfs is given in the logfile (or standard error) if bit 5 of debug option is set.
  • -q — Dump the forms in the database to outfile (or standard output). Some statistics are given in the logfile (or standard error) if bit 5 of debug option is set.
  • -r rejectfile — In non record/field mode, specifies the file where to write input segments that could not be looked up. Defaults to standard error.
  • -s trace_level — Trace spelling rule application:
    • 0 — no tracing (default).
    • 1 — trace valid surface forms.
    • 2 — trace rules whose lexical part match.
    • 3 — trace surface left context match (surface word construction).
    • 4 — trace surface right context mismatch and rule blocking.
    • 5 — trace rule non blocking.

A trace_level implies all preceding ones.

  • -t trace_level — Specify the level of tracing for rule application:
    • 0 — no tracing (default).
    • 1 — trace goal rules that apply.
    • 2 — trace all rules that apply, indentation indicates the recursion depth.
    • 10 — trace also rules that were tried but did not apply

A trace_level implies all preceding ones.

  • -U — In record/field mode, unknown words (i.e. that were unsuccessfully looked up) are annotated with ??\??.
  • -v — Print version and exit.
  • -y — Parse only: do not process the description other than for syntax checking. While developing a morphology description you may use this option to catch syntax errors quickly after each modification before running it "for real".
  • -z — implies -y. Parse and output the lexical descriptions in normalized form.
  • infile — file containing the segments to lookup, one per line. Defaults to the standard input.
  • outfile — file in which the output of the program is written. One line per solution. Solutions of different input segments are separated by an empty line. Defaults to the standard output.

🔥 WORD GRAMMAR AND SPELLING RULES 🔥

For a detailed account of the principles and mechanisms used in mmorph, please refer to the documents cited in the SEE ALSO section below.

Briefly sketched, morphosyntactic descriptions written for mmorph describe how words are constructed by the concatenation of morphemes, and how this concatenation process changes the spelling of these morphemes. The first part, the word structure grammar, is specified by restricted context free rewrite rules whose formalism is inspired by unification based systems (cf. Shieber 1986). The second part, the spelling changes, is specified by spelling rules in a formalism based on the two level model of morphology. This approach to morphology is described in Ritchie, Russell et. al, 1992 and more concisely in Pulman and Hepple 1993.

🌈 ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES 🌈

To decide which characters are displayable on the output, mmorph uses the language specific description that setlocale(3) sets according to the environment variable LC_CTYPE. For the languages that are dealt with in MULTEXT it is a good idea to have that variable set to iso_8859_1.

🍓 EXAMPLES 🍓

Here is a summary of the common usage of mmorph options:

mmorph -n -m morphfile

Test mode: reads the whole of morphfile and prints results on standard error. No database is created, no words are looked up.

mmorph -c -m morphfile

Database creation: reads the whole of morphfile and stores the results in a database (morphfile.db). Typed feature structures are collected in a separate file (morphfile.tfs). Standard input is read for words to look up in the new database.

mmorph -m morphfile

Lookup mode: reads only the Alphabets, Attributes and Types sections of morphfile. Standard input is read for words to look up according to the existing database (mmorphfile.db and morphfile.tfs).

mmorph -m morphfile -a addfile

Addition mode: ignores the Lexicon section of morphfile, but addfile is consulted, and the results are added to the database. Standard input is read for words to look up according to the augmented database (mmorphfile.db and morphfile.tfs).

😭 DIAGNOSTICS 😭

Error messages should be self explanatory. Please refer to mmorph(5) for a formal description of the syntax.

🎀 FILES 🎀

okay so when you run this thing, it literally makes files for you. like, it's giving arts and crafts but for morphology bestie ✨

  • morphfile.db — this is the database file of all the forms it generated for the descriptions in the file morphfile, which you passed in with the -m option. so like, that's your main output baby 🫶
  • morphfile.tfs — and this one is the database file of typed feature structures that get associated to morphfile.db. they're besties, they come as a pair 💅

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

go read these when you're done here, no cap:

  • mmorph(5), setlocale(3).
  • G. Russell and D. Petitpierre, MMORPH - The Multext Morphology Program, Version 2.3, October1995, MULTEXT deliverable report for task 2.3.1.
  • Ritchie, G. D., G.J. Russell, A.W. Black and S.G. Pulman (1992), Computational Morphology: Practical Mechanisms for the English Lexicon, Cambridge Mass., MIT Press.
  • Pulman, S.G. and M.R. Hepple, (1993) ``A feature-based formalism for two level phonology: a description and implementation'', Computer Speech and Language 7, pp.333-358.
  • Shieber, S.M. (1986), An Introduction to Unification-Based Approaches to Grammar, CSLI Lecture Notes Number 4, Stanford University

👑 AUTHOR 👑

the one and only, the main character who made this happen:

Dominique Petitpierre, ISSCO, <petitp@divsun.unige.ch>

like, icon behavior honestly 💖

🌈 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 🌈

giving credit where credit is due, as we should:

the parser for the morphology description formalism was written using yacc(1) and flex(1). and Flex was written by Vern Paxson, <vern@ee.lbl.gov>, and is distributed in the framework of the GNU project under the condition of the GNU General Public License

the database module in the current version uses the db library package developed at the University of California, Berkeley by Margo Seltzer, Keith Bostic <bostic@cs.berkeley.edu> and Ozan Yigit.

the crc procedures used for taking a signature of the typed feature structure declarations are taken from the fingerprint package by Daniel J. Bernstein and use code written by Gary S. Brown.

and that's a wrap bestie!! ✨💖 this whole thing is Version 2.3, October 1995 and you've been reading MMORPH(1) — go forth and morph, you absolute legend 🦋💅🎀

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