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Wiktfinnish - Inflecting Finnish words

This is a Python module for inflecting Finnish words (verb inflection, comparatives, cases, possessive suffixes, clitics) using Wiktionary-compatible declensions and conjugations.

Overview

This Python module is intended for generating inflected forms of Finnish words in Wiktionary. It is most conveniently used with dictionaries extracted using the wiktextract. The intention is that this module can be used to generate the complete set of inflected forms for any Finnish word in Wiktionary - including comparisons, possessive suffixes, clitics, and nominally inflected verb forms.

Getting started

Installing

To install wiktwikfinnish, use pip3 (or pip, as appropriate), or clone the repository and install from the source:

git clone https://github.com/tatuylonen/wiktfinnish.git
cd wiktfinnish
python3 setup.py install

This will install the wiktfinnish package.

Note that this software has currently only been tested with Python 3. Back-porting to Python 2.7 should not be difficult; it just hasn't been tested yet. Please report back if you test and make this work with Python 2.

Running tests

This package includes tests written using the unittest framework. They can be run using, for example, nose, which can be installed using pip3 install nose.

To run the tests, just use the following command in the top-level directory:

nosetests

Usage

Generating an inflected word form

The basic way to generate an inflected word form is to use the following code snippet.

import wiktfinnish

results = wiktfinnish.inflect(name, args, form)

The inflect function returns a list of strings, which are the alternative forms generated for that word form. The preferred, or most common form should be first in the list and rare/archaic examples later.

The name and arguments specify the conjugation/declension for the word. That includes specifying the word to be inflected. See below for details.

The form is a 5-tuple (verbform, comparison, case, possessive, clitic), that specifies the inflected form to be generated. It is described in detail below.

Specifying the conjugation/declension

In the API, each word to be inflection must be specified by a conjugation (verbs) or declination (nominals) specification. The specification is basically the arguments of the {{fi-decl-xyx}} or `{{fi-conj-xyz}}template from Wiktionary, encoded into a Python dictionary. In the API, this template will be calledargs. Additionally, the API requies the name of the template to be supplied as the nameargument. These are readily available in the proper format if the dictionary has been extracted usingwiktextract`` (see below).

Specifying the desired word form

The desired word form is specified by a 5-tuple (verbform, comparison, case, possessive, clitic), where any unused components must be empty strings.

Generally, finite verb forms only have the verbform part specified and other parts empty. Nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and numerals always have the verbform and comparison parts empty. Adjectives (and some verb forms) may also use comparison. The possessive specifies a possessive suffix, and they are mostly used with nouns. The clitic is specifies any clitics to be attached at the end of the word, and can be used with any part-of-speech.

Verb form names

The following values are allowed for verbform, in addition to the empty string. The list of valid verb form names can be found in wiktfinnish.VERB_FORMS. (There may still be some changes coming in how case endings are handled for infinitives.)

    pres-1sg
    pres-2sg
    pres-3sg
    pres-1pl
    pres-2pl
    pres-3pl
    pres-1sg-neg
    pres-2sg-neg
    pres-3sg-neg
    pres-1pl-neg
    pres-2pl-neg
    pres-3pl-neg
    pres-pass
    pres-pass-neg
    past-1sg
    past-2sg
    past-3sg
    past-1pl
    past-2pl
    past-3pl
    past-1sg-neg
    past-2sg-neg
    past-3sg-neg
    past-1pl-neg
    past-2pl-neg
    past-3pl-neg
    past-pass
    past-pass-neg
    cond-1sg
    cond-2sg
    cond-3sg
    cond-1pl
    cond-2pl
    cond-3pl
    cond-1sg-neg
    cond-2sg-neg
    cond-3sg-neg
    cond-1pl-neg
    cond-2pl-neg
    cond-3pl-neg
    cond-pass
    cond-pass-neg
    impr-2sg
    impr-3sg
    impr-1pl
    impr-2pl
    impr-3pl
    impr-2sg-neg
    impr-3sg-neg
    impr-1pl-neg
    impr-2pl-neg
    impr-3pl-neg
    impr-pass
    impr-pass-neg
    potn-1sg
    potn-2sg
    potn-3sg
    potn-1pl
    potn-2pl
    potn-3pl
    potn-1sg-neg
    potn-2sg-neg
    potn-3sg-neg
    potn-1pl-neg
    potn-2pl-neg
    potn-3pl-neg
    potn-pass
    potn-pass-neg
    pres-part
    pres-pass-part
    past-part
    past-pass-part
    agnt-part
    nega-part
    inf1
    inf1-long
    inf2-ine
    inf2-pass-ine
    inf2-ins
    inf3-ine
    inf3-ela
    inf3-ill
    inf3-ade
    inf3-abe
    inf3-ins
    inf3-pass-ins
    inf4-nom
    inf4-par
    inf5

Comparison names

Adjectives, participles, and some other adverbs accept comparisons. The normal positive form is marked by the empty string. comp indicates comparative, and sup indicates superlative form. The list of valid comparison names (including the empty string) can be found in wiktfinnish.COMP_FORMS.

Case names

Nouns, pronouns, adjectives, numerals, and various verb forms (especially participles) accept case endings. The following names are used to specify both case ending and number. The acc-sg and acc-pl values are only valid for certain pronouns. For all other parts of speech, one of nom-sg, nom-pl, gen-sg, or gen-pl should be used instead. The list of valid case+number values can be found in wiktfinnish.CASE_FORMS.

    nom-sg     - nominative (singular)
    acc-sg     - accusative
    gen-sg     - genitive
    ptv-sg     - partitive
    ine-sg     - inessive
    ela-sg     - elative
    ill-sg     - illative
    ade-sg     - adessive
    abl-sg     - ablative
    all-sg     - allative
    ess-sg     - essive
    tra-sg     - translative
    ins-sg     - instructive
    abe-sg     - abessive
    cmt-sg     - comitative
    nom-pl     - nominative (plural)
    acc-pl     - etc.
    gen-pl
    ptv-pl
    ine-pl
    ela-pl
    ill-pl
    ade-pl
    abl-pl
    all-pl
    ess-pl
    tra-pl
    ins-pl
    abe-pl
    cmt-pl

Possessive suffixes

The following values are used for possessive suffixes. The empty string indicates that no possessive suffix is to be attached. Note that for the third person, the 3x value is used for both singular and plural, as the forms are always the same. The list of valid possessive forms (including the empty string) can be found in wiktfinnish.POSSESSIVE_FORMS.

   1s       - first person singular
   2s	    - second person singular
   3x	    - third person (singular or plural)
   1p	    - first person plural
   2p	    - second person plural

Clitics

There is a fixed set of clitics that can be attached. In practice, however, more clitics may be used in spoken language and there are various other alternations. The following values can be used for clitics, in addition to the empty string, which signifies no clitic. The list of valid clitic values (including the empty string) can be found in wiktfinnish.CLITIC_FORMS.

    kO
    kin
    kAAn
    pA
    s
    kA
    hAn
    kOhAn
    pAhAn
    pAs
    kOs
    kinkO
    kAAnkO
    kinkOhAn

Iterating over all possible word forms

Functions are also provided for iterating over all valid 5-tuples indicating word forms. These are useful if one wants to generate all possible forms of a word. The following code snippet iterates over all adjective forms:

import wiktfinnish

for verbform, comp, case, poss, clitic in wiktfinnish.all_forms_iter("adj"):
    print(verbform, comp, case, poss, clitic)

The all_forms_iter function takes as a mandatory argument a part-of-speech (as returned by the wiktextract module, see below), including "noun", "adj", "verb", "num", "pron", "adv", etc. It can also take the following optional keyword arguments (more will likely be added later) to restrict the forms that are enumerated:

transitive: if True (default), include agent participle (forms that are only valid for verbs with an agent)
no_comp: If set to True, prevents inclusion of comparative forms (for adjectives, adverbs)
no_case: If set to True, prevents inclusion of case forms (other than nominative singular)
no_poss: If set to True, prevents inclusion of possessive suffixes
no_clitic: if set to True, prevents inclusion of clitics.

Fast way of obtaining list of possible forms for a part-of-speech

There is also a cached version of the iterator that returns a sequence containing all valid forms for the given part-of-speech and keyword arguments. It takes the same arguments (including keyword arguments) as the iterator, but instead of returning an iterator returns a list. This function is also much faster and caches its results for maximum performance.

import wiktfinnish

lst = wiktfinnish.all_forms_list("verb")

Standard vs. colloquial Finnish

Currently this generates forms according to standard written Finnish. The intention is to generate spoken language / colloquial forms for standard Finnish in the future, as well as possibly some dialectical forms. However, that is not yet implemented.

Contributing

The official repository of this project is on github.

Please email to ylo at clausal.com if you wish to contribute or have patches or suggestions.

License

Credit and linking to the project's website and/or citing any future papers on the project would be highly appreciated.