.. Copyright (C) 2001-2025 NLTK Project
.. For license information, see LICENSE.TXT

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WordNet Lowest Common Hypernyms
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Wordnet's lowest_common_hypernyms() method is based used to locate the
lowest single hypernym that is shared by two given words:

    >>> from nltk.corpus import wordnet as wn
    >>> wn.synset('kin.n.01').lowest_common_hypernyms(wn.synset('mother.n.01'))
    [Synset('relative.n.01')]

    >>> wn.synset('policeman.n.01').lowest_common_hypernyms(wn.synset('chef.n.01'))
    [Synset('person.n.01')]

This method generally returns a single result, but in some cases, more than one
valid LCH is possible:

    >>> wn.synset('body.n.09').lowest_common_hypernyms(wn.synset('sidereal_day.n.01'))
    [Synset('attribute.n.02'), Synset('measure.n.02')]

In some cases, lowest_common_hypernyms() can return one of the synsets which was
passed to it as an argument:

    >>> wn.synset('woman.n.01').lowest_common_hypernyms(wn.synset('girlfriend.n.02'))
    [Synset('woman.n.01')]

In NLTK 3.0a2 the behavior of lowest_common_hypernyms() was changed to give more
accurate results in a small set of cases, generally when dealing with nouns describing
social roles or jobs. To emulate the pre v3.0a2 behavior, you can set the use_min_depth=True
flag:

    >>> wn.synset('policeman.n.01').lowest_common_hypernyms(wn.synset('chef.n.01'))
    [Synset('person.n.01')]
    >>> wn.synset('policeman.n.01').lowest_common_hypernyms(wn.synset('chef.n.01'), use_min_depth=True)
    [Synset('organism.n.01')]

In some cases use_min_depth=True may return more or fewer results than the default
behavior:

    >>> wn.synset('woman.n.01').lowest_common_hypernyms(wn.synset('girlfriend.n.02'))
    [Synset('woman.n.01')]
    >>> wn.synset('woman.n.01').lowest_common_hypernyms(wn.synset('girlfriend.n.02'), use_min_depth=True)
    [Synset('organism.n.01'), Synset('woman.n.01')]

In the general case, however, they tend to return the same results:

    >>> wn.synset('body.n.09').lowest_common_hypernyms(wn.synset('sidereal_day.n.01'))
    [Synset('attribute.n.02'), Synset('measure.n.02')]
    >>> wn.synset('body.n.09').lowest_common_hypernyms(wn.synset('sidereal_day.n.01'), use_min_depth=True)
    [Synset('attribute.n.02'), Synset('measure.n.02')]
