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John - 05 Apr 2006 15:44 GMT

Hi there,

I've been searching the newsgroups but can't find the
answer................can anyone tell me where I can download an English
dictionary from so that I can generate random words AND specify whether each
word is a verb, noun, pronoun etc.

I've seen a useful workaround using the office dictionary (see below), but
I'm guessing this is going to be quite slow if I'm to retrieve long words as
well as short ones, plus I assuming you can't (programmatically) select only
verbs or nouns etc.?
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/microsoft.public.word.vba.general/browse_thread
/thread/d1cd064fd6e1949f/0315fd4ad69f9c83?lnk=st&q=vba+get+random+words+from+dic
tionary&rnum=1#0315fd4ad69f9c83

The ideal would be a free dictionary of course, but more importantly it
needs to be from a reasonably sound source. No Mickey Mouse words! (No
offence Disney)

Best regards

John

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Helmut Weber - 05 Apr 2006 21:57 GMT

Hi John,

prepare for exploring a whole new universe.

google for "corpus linguistics", like

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_linguistics
http://www.corpus-linguistics.de/
http://www.rc.kyushu-u.ac.jp/~higuchi/text7/corpus.html

See also: http://quickdic.org/index_e.html
Topic: "free dictionaries"

But I don't think you'll get what you want for free.

Signature

Greetings from Bavaria, Germany

Helmut Weber, MVP WordVBA

Win XP, Office 2003
"red.sys" & Chr$(64) & "t-online.de"

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John - 05 Apr 2006 23:32 GMT

Hi Helmut,

Thanks for the links. Corpus Linguistics certainly looks a fascinating
area, I think a little beyond what I need for the moment. I'm really just
trying to generate random nouns or random verbs, but not to make any kind of
sentence or grammatical sense.

I see, for example that Word's Thesaurus identifies individual words with
"(n.)" for noun and "(adj.)" for adjective...........Is it possible to
either write a loop such as:

For Each WordObject In Dictionary
If WordObject.Type = Noun Then.... and so on

Or

For x = 1 To Dictionary.Words.Count

What do you think?

As long as I can get an initial list of nouns (and also verbs) then that
would be fine.

Anyway, thanks for the links below (the Wiki one wasn't working when I tried
earlier, but I'll have a look later on).

Best regards

John - Greetings from London!

> Hi John,
>
[quoted text clipped - 10 lines]
>
> But I don't think you'll get what you want for free.

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Jezebel - 06 Apr 2006 00:03 GMT

The Susanne corpus is available from here:
http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/grs2/ftpBufPageSue.html - it includes part
of speech data.

You'll have to do some work to turn it into the sort of list you want. The
problem is the terms like 'noun' and 'adjective' are actually fairly fuzzy,
and strictly characterise not to the word but its prevalent usage.

And, off-topic: what part of speech is 'galore' ?

> Hi Helmut,
>
[quoted text clipped - 40 lines]
>>
>> But I don't think you'll get what you want for free.

Reply to this Message

John - 06 Apr 2006 09:33 GMT

Hi Jezebel,

Thanks for your reply.

I'm clearly not an expert, but don't all (paper) dictionaries come with a
"noun/verb/adjective" classification?

I've had a look at the lexicon file from the link you sent but can't really
fathom the classifications that come with it. Isn't there a way to access
Word's own dictionary/thesaurus?

Thanks for you help

John

> The Susanne corpus is available from here:
> http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/grs2/ftpBufPageSue.html - it includes
[quoted text clipped - 50 lines]
>>>
>>> But I don't think you'll get what you want for free.

Reply to this Message

Jezebel - 06 Apr 2006 09:40 GMT

> I'm clearly not an expert, but don't all (paper) dictionaries come with a
> "noun/verb/adjective" classification?

Yes they do, but they are classifying the word's usage, not the word. And
apart from substantives, most words fall under more than one category.

> I've had a look at the lexicon file from the link you sent but can't
> really fathom the classifications that come with it.

That's also documented at the same source. The final column in the download
files indicates the word type.

Isn't there a way to access

> Word's own dictionary/thesaurus?

Not that I know of.

> Thanks for you help
>
[quoted text clipped - 54 lines]
>>>>
>>>> But I don't think you'll get what you want for free.

Reply to this Message

John - 06 Apr 2006 15:10 GMT

Hi J

Thanks again. Yes I understand what you mean about the multiple meanings.

Actually I'm not trying to create real meaning, just random words that can
be used as nouns (so if they can also be used as verbs, say, that doesn't
matter).

Following on from our discussion I've discovered the SynonymInfo object and
its PartOfSpeechList property, which I can test words against and then add
them to a new collection or eventually custom dictionary. My only problem
at the moment is that I get the part of speech for the synonym rather than
the test word itself.

I suppose I'll just have to leave it running all night!

Anyway, thanks to you and Helmut. I've learnt alot.

Best regards

John

>> I'm clearly not an expert, but don't all (paper) dictionaries come with a
>> "noun/verb/adjective" classification?
[quoted text clipped - 72 lines]
>>>>>
>>>>> But I don't think you'll get what you want for free.

Reply to this Message

Helmut Weber - 06 Apr 2006 15:49 GMT

Hi John,

just out of curiosity,

I wouldn't mind to see an example,
or send me a sample doc with the macro.

Signature

Greetings from Bavaria, Germany

Helmut Weber, MVP WordVBA

Win XP, Office 2003
"red.sys" & Chr$(64) & "t-online.de"

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John - 06 Apr 2006 16:06 GMT

Hi Helmut,

Certainly. Its in very basic inefficient form at the moment, but will send
over first thing tomorrow.

Best regards

John

> Hi John,
>
> just out of curiosity,
>
> I wouldn't mind to see an example,
> or send me a sample doc with the macro.

Reply to this Message