Word Form Search

In order to find all possible word forms, one can use the function stem(). The stem() function takes words and phrases in any form as its argument.

Syntax

stem([grammatical_value,] term,…), where the term is a required word.

The function stem() is equivalent to a simple word query (with or without quotes).

Example

gather = "gather" = stem(gather) matches all forms of the verb "gather" and of the words that coincide with it in one of the forms (gathered, gathering, gatherings, etc).

opening = "opening" = stem(opening) matches all forms of the verb "open" (open, opens, opening…) and of the noun "opening" (opening, openings), because "opening" is both the form of the verb "open" and of the noun "opening".

The stem() function may find unwanted results in the case of grammatical homonymy (if the word specified in the query is identical to another word with different meaning).

Example

kind is the form of the lexemes kind (meaning "type") and kind (meaning "caring"), so the query matches, for instance, "other kinds" and "surprisingly kind people".

stem(rose) is a form of the verb "rise" and the noun "rose", so the query matches "rise, rising" and "rose, Rose’s".

stem(can) is a form of the verb "can" (to be able to) and the noun "can" (a container), so the query matches all forms of the verb (can, could) and the noun (can, cans).

In order to remove ambiguity, users should explicitly specify the lexeme they search for (for more details, see Search by Lemma).

Note

If a query consists of several words and is enclosed in quotes, it matches documents containing this phrase in any form.

"go back" = phrase(stem(go), stem(back)) matches «going back», «goes back».

If a query consists of several words not enclosed in quotes, it matches documents containing all the words listed in the query.

go back = stem(go) and stem(back) matches documents containing forms of "go" and "back".

A function with several arguments is equivalent to several functions with a single argument concatenated using the or operator:

stem(conference, exhibition, show) = stem(conference) or stem(exhibition) or stem(show).

The function stem() also supports morphological search (see Morphological Search).