Petr Pajas

#
PML Tree Query

Documentation for version 0.7.10 (beta)

## Introduction

PML Tree Query (PML-TQ) is a query language and search engine targeted for querying multi-layer annotated treebanks stored in the PML data format. It can be used to query all kinds of treebanks: dependency, constituency, multi-layered, parallel treebanks, as well as other kinds of richly structured types of annotation.

The query language is declarative and offers both textual and graphical representation of queries. Currently, there are two implementations of the query engine, one based on a relational database (Oracle or PostgreSQL >= 8.4), the other based on Perl and the TrEd toolkit. Three user interfaces are available: a WEB-based interface for the database-based query engine displaying query results as SVG, a full-featured graphical user interface for both engines available as a plug-in to the tree editor TrEd, and a text-only command-line interface.

Main features:

1. queries can span over all layers of annotation (including annotation dictionaries)

2. allows arbitrary logical constraints

3. supports output filters (generate custom text output, compute statistics, ...)

4. offers graphical query representation with relations (links) between nodes depicted as arrows

5. GUI interface built into TrEd

6. understands PML data model (no conversion, no information loss)

TODO: comparison with other query languages and engines (NetGraph, TGrep2, TigerSearch, Nite, XPath, LPath+)

## Basic concepts

A PML-TQ query consists of a selective part that selects nodes from the treebank and an optional sequence of output filters that are used to extract data from the matching nodes, post-process the results, compute statistics, generate tabular output, etc.

The selective part of a PML-TQ query postulates requirements on one or more nodes from the treebank and their mutual relationships (e.g. on the topological configuration in the tree structure). It is formed by one or more node selectors, which form the outermost scope of the query. Inner scopes of the query are given by nested subqueries as described later.

A node selector represents a node in the treebank of a certain type (in the PML data model, the nodes in the treebank annotation can be typed; the query can also refer to several annotation layers with different types of nodes) and postulates constraints on its properties including relationships to nodes represented by other selectors.

Selectors may nest other selectors; a nested selector belongs to the same scope as the containing selector The nested selector may explicitly specify the relation of its matching node to the node matched by the containing selector; the default relation is `child`. The nesting of selectors can thus naturally follow the topology of the matching tree.

Selectors can also be named and referred to from other node selectors; however, in many cases, the need for explicitly naming them can be eliminated by nesting.

A match of a query is a mapping which assigns to each outermost-scoped selector a node from a treebank (called a matching node) of the type specified by the selector, in such a way that all the matching nodes are mutually distinct and simultaneously satisfy the constraints postulated by their corresponding selectors (including constraints on their mutual relationships). The match can be represented as a tuple of the matching nodes ordered accordingly to some canonical ordering of the selectors from the outermost scope of the query. There can be zero, one, or more distinct matches of the query in the treebank (two matches are distinct if, as ordered tuples, they differ in at least one node).

Non-identity rule: Two distinct selectors in the same scope of the query always represent two distinct nodes in each match of the query or sub-query.

Selectors can postulate the following types of constraints:

- predicates

- references to other selectors

- subqueries

- boolean combinations of the above

In the following descriptions, we refer to the selector postulating a constraint as as the current selector.

Predicate constraints assert equality, inequality, or regular expression match between values computed from terms. An atomic term is a constant (integer, float, or character string), or an attribute of a node matched by the current selector or some other selector in the current or outer scope of the query. A term is either an atomic term or a term obtained from other terms using arithmetical (`+, *, -, div, mod`) or string (concatenation `&` ) operators, or functions.

A reference is a constraint on the relationship of a node matched by some named selector to the node matched by the current selector. The referred selector must either belong to the same scope as the current selector or to its outer scope.

A subquery is formed by a selector (called the leading selector of the subquery) nested in the current selector and augmented by restrictions on the number of occurrences, computed as the number of distinct nodes matched by the leading selector of the subquery relatively to a fixed match of the selectors in the current and outer scope (including the current selector). For example, to postulate a constraint that each node matched by the current selector must have at least two child nodes, we create a subquery in form of a nested selector in the child relation to the current selector and restrict the number of occurrences to two and more.

The leading selector can nest other selectors. Each subquery starts a new scope whose outer scope is the scope of the containing selector together with the containing selector's outer scope (if any). Unlike selectors from the outermost scope, selectors declared within a subquery do not represent any particular node in the resulting match. They can refer to selectors from the same scope, and also to selectors from the outer scope, but not vice versa (selectors from the outer scope cannot refer to the selectors in the subquery).

A subquery constraint is verified as follows: for each match of the selectors in the current and outer scope, all matches of the subquery are located (these may coincide with nodes matched by the selectors in the outer scope). The number of distinct nodes matched by the leading selector of the subquery are counted and this number is compared with the restrictions on number of occurrences. The constraint is satisfied if and only if these restrictions are met.

A constraint can also be a boolean combination of other constraints; a nested node selector occurring in a boolean combination with other nested node selectors or constraints is considered to be a subquery with at least one occurrence.

A PML-TQ query can be visualized as a graph consisting of one or more trees whose nodes are the selectors connected by edges according to the nesting of selectors and subqueries. In this sense we may sometimes refer to selectors as query nodes and to the query as query graph or query tree (a technical root can be added above all the trees so that a forest becomes a single tree). The edges can be labeled or colored to represent different relationships between nodes. References to named selectors can be represented by an additional layer of links (edges) in the graph that may go across the basic tree structure of the query tree.

## Tutorial

The purpose of this tutorial is to show how to create and run queries from the tree editor TrEd. The textual form of the query can also be used in the web or command-line interface.

As our examples, we use queries over the Prague Dependency Treebank 2.0; conceptually similar queries can be applied to most other treebanks, although the node types and attributes will be probably different.

The tutorial gradually passes from very simple to complex queries and demonstrates various common syntactic constructions of the PML-TQ language. We always show how to write the query in the textual form as well as how to build and run the query graphically in the tree editor TrEd.

### Getting started

To start using PML-TQ from the tree editor TrEd, press Shift F3 or select Macros TredMacro New Tree Query from the main menu in TrEd.

Choose Treebank (server); if doing this for the first time, you will be asked to fill the connection form: as `url`, fill the search engine URL including port number (e.g. `http://mysearchserver.org:8082` where mysearchserver.org is the host name or IP address of your PML-TQ search service and 8082 is the port the search service is listening on); fill `username` and `password` with your credentials for the search service (which you can receive from the administrator of the PML-TQ search service). When done, confirm with `OK`. TrEd will attempt to contact the search service you have specified and will ask it for a list of treebanks avaiable. Subsequently, you will be asked to select treebanks for which you want to configure a connection.

Once your connections are configured, a dialog window with a list of available connections will be offered. To select a connection, simply choose it from the list and press Select. You may also use the buttons Add Service to add/remove connections to other treebanks provided by the server of the selected connection, New URL to create a connection to a new server, Info to display information about the selected connection (such as name and description of the treebank), Edit to modify the connection data (`url`, `username`, and `password`), and Remove to remove the selected connection from the list.

A window with an empty query tree is displayed by TrEd:

You can also use the toolkit without TrEd from a web browser (although you will not be able to build the query graphically nor see the graphical representation of your query). To start, just open the search engine URL and log in using any web browser capable of combining JavaScript, CSS, and SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics). At the time of writing this tutorial, the best choice is the Opera browser, followed by Google Chrome, Firefox, and Safari (please avoid Microsoft Internet Explorer because it lacks native SVG support).

### A simple query

Now we may create our first simple query. We shall search for all nodes of the type `t-node` (tectogrammatical nodes in PDT 2.0) that whose attribute `functor` equals to `DPHR`. In TrEd, the query can be created in several ways:

- Method 1: Press Insert or

  Add node
  on the toolbar to create a new selector, choose `t-node` from the offered list of node types and confirm with OK.

  Then press = or

  Equality
  to create a new atomic constraint, and fill `functor` as `a` and `"DPHR"` as `b` in the form (both the attribute name and its value can be selected from a list).

- Method 2: Press e or

  Edit query
  to open the query text editor and type

      t-node [ functor='DPHR' ]

  into the text field.

- Method 3: Open the query text editor as above, but use helper buttons below the text field to build the text of the query: Press Type and select `t-node`, Press [ ], put the cursor between the brackets by clicking there or by pressing the left arrow two times, press Attribute and select `functor` and finally press = and select `"DPHR"`.

The result in TrEd will look like this:

To start the search now, press Space or

Query
or
Search
. After a while, a window will pop up indicating whether some results have been found, and pressing `Display` will show the first result in a new view:
To see the full sentence in the text field above the trees , click on the result view on the right. Next result can be displayed by pressing the key n or
Next match
.

By default, the search engine returns up to 100 matches (in no particular order), which should be more than sufficient for viewing a few matching examples. This limit can be changed in the search engine configuration (displayed by pressing C or

Configure
, but raising this limit may slow the search. We shall later see how to compute the number of all matches, using output filters.

Press p or

Previous match
to go back to the previous match and press
This match
to return the current match to view.

Note that the result view contains not only the matching tree but the complete document, so it is possible to see the tree preceding or following the currently matching tree by pressing Page Up/

Previous Tree
or Page Down/
Next Tree
, respectively.

### A query with two nodes

We shall now make the query more complex by adding another node to it. We shall ask for a t-node with functor "DPHR" that has a child (since DPHR t-nodes are often leaves, it may be interesting to see what children we get).

To add a new child, select the only node in our query tree and press Insert or

Add node
on the toolbar. Now a pop-up window shows asking for a type of relation the new node to the existing node. The default value is `child`. Since this is what we want, click OK. TrEd automatically assumes the new query node to be a selector for nodes of the type `t-node`, since, according to the PML schema of the tectogrammatical layer, a `t-node` can only have a `t-node` for its child; otherwise it would offer a list of nodes types to choose from.

In text form, the query can be equivalently expressed as

    t-node [ functor='DPHR', t-node [ ] ]

or

    t-node [ functor='DPHR', child t-node [ ] ]

These forms use nesting of node selectors, the first form makes use of the fact that the default relation of a nested selector to the selector in which it is nested is `child`.

The query can also be expressed without nesting, using names, either as

    t-node $a := [ functor='DPHR', child $b ];
    t-node $b := [ ];

or

    t-node $a := [ functor='DPHR' ];
    t-node $b := [ parent $a ];

naming the two nodes `$a` and `$b` and either indicating that `$a` has a child $b or that `$b` has a parent $a.

### Disjunctions, regular expressions and set enumerations

We now extend our query expression to cover also t-nodes with functor `CPHR`. This can be done in three different ways:

Using a disjunction:

    t-node [ functor='DPHR' or functor='CPHR', t-node [ ] ]

Apart from editing the query, this can be created using the GUI e.g. in the following steps:

1. Select the top query node (the one with the `functor="DPHR"` constraint

2. Press h or

   (Un)Expand
   to expand the constraints to auxiliary nodes in the query tree. The result will look like this:

3. Select the auxiliary node representing the constraint `functor="DPHR"` and press o or

   OR
   to create an auxiliary `OR` node above it.

4. Select the `OR` node and press = or

   Equality
   to create a new equality constraint and as above, fill `functor` as `a` and `"CPHR"` as `b` in the form. Alternatively, you can select the node `functor="DPHR"`, press Ctrl Insert or
   Copy
   to copy it into the clipboard, then select the `OR` node and press Shift Insert or
   Paste
   to paste it. Then press Enter or double-click the node or just the word `"DPHR"` on one of the two nodes and change `"DPHR"` to `"CPHR"`.

5. The result will look like this:

   Selecting the top t-node and pressing h or
   (Un)Expand
   hides the auxiliary nodes, and gives this:

Using a regular expression:

    t-node [ functor ~ '[CD]PHR', t-node [ ] ]

Symbol `~` (tilde) denotes a binary relation between two values that is true if and only if the value on the left interpreted as string matches the value on the right interpreted as regular expression. The regular expression `[CD]PHR` is matched by any string containing either `CPHR` or `DPHR` as a substring. If, for example, `XDPHR` were a possible functor value, we would have to be more precise and rewrite the expression as

    t-node [ functor ~ "^[CD]PHR$", t-node [ ] ]

Since `^` and `$` meta-characters are only matched by the start and end of a string, the value of `functor` now must be exactly `CPHR` or `DPHR`.

Creating a regular expression test graphically in TrEd is similar to creating an equality test: either press ~ key or the

RegExp
toolbar button. Do not forget to enclose the regular expression (field labeled `b` in the dialog) into apostrophes or quotes since in the PML-TQ syntax it is just a literal string.

Using a set enumeration:

    t-node [ functor in { "CPHR", "DPHR" }, t-node [ ] ]

The relation `in` asserts that the value computed from the expression on the left equals to a value of some of the expressions listed in the set enumeration on the right.

The query text editor provides a button in { ... } that, for attributes with a fixed set of possible values, allows the enumeration to be created by selecting the desired values from a list.

### Types of relations (links)

#### Structural relations

The nodes in the query can be linked by several types of relations. The built-in relations are the structural relations (child, parent, ancestor, descendant, sibling, same-tree-as, same-document-as), ordering relations (depth-first-precedes, depth-first-follows, order-precedes, order-follows). The name of a built-in relation can optionally be followed by a pair of colons `::` in order to distinguish it from PML reference relations described below.

#### PML Reference Links

The PML data model allows connecting nodes (and other data structures) by so called PML references. In PML-TQ one can use any PML reference as a relation by using the attribute path of an attribute containing the reference, optionally followed by `->` (in order to prevent a collision with a similarly named built-in or implementation specific relations). For example, in PDT 2.0, the nodes on the t-layer are connected to nodes on the a-layer using a PML references in the attributes `a/lex.rf` and `a/aux.rf`. The following query uses the `a/lex.rf` PML reference as a relation:

    # t-layer dependency reversed on a-layer
    a-node $A := [
     child a-node $B := [  ]
    ];

    t-node [
      child t-node [
        a/lex.rf $A
      ],
      a/lex.rf $B
    ];

PML references are also used in PDT 2.0 to represent textual and grammatical coreference links (attributes `coref_text.rf` and `coref_gram.rf`). For example, the following query searches for a grammatical coreference where referring node precedes the referred node. The query defines selectors for two tectogrammatical nodes `$referring` and `$referred` connected by a grammatical-coreference link `coref_gram.rf`, such that the lexical counterpart of `$referred` follows that of `$referring` in the ordering of the a-layer (which coincides with the ordering of the original sentence).

    t-node $referring := [
     a/lex.rf a-node $referring_lex := [],
     coref_gram.rf t-node $referred := [
       a/lex.rf a-node $referred_lex := [ order-follows $referring_lex ],
     ]
    ]

In the last example, the two t-nodes were directly connected by a grammatical-coreference link. If we want to look for nodes connected by a chain of grammatical-coreference links, we can do it by using a transitive closure of the relation `coref_gram.rf`, which can be expressed in PML-TQ as `coref_gram.rf{1,}`. The lower bound `1` means we are looking for chains of length at least 1 and the absence of the upper bound means that we put no limits on the length of the chain.

    t-node $referring := [
     a/lex.rf a-node $referring_lex := [],
     coref_gram.rf{1,} t-node $referred := [
       a/lex.rf a-node $referred_lex := [ order-follows $referring_lex ],
     ]
    ]

In TrEd, a relation can be made transitive by specifying the minimum and/or maximum bound; this can be done e.g. by double-clicking on an existing relation arrow.

Note that in the case of a cyclic chain of PML references, the chains maximum length is the number of distinct nodes in the chain plus one (i.e. the chain is allowed to start and end on the same node, but it is not allowed to continue another round along the cycle). For example, the following query searches for a cycle in the annotation of textual coreference in the PDT 2.0 tectogrammatical annotation (indeed, there is one cycle of length 2 left there by a mistake):

    t-node $t := [
     coref_gram.rf{1,} $t
    ]

#### Implementation- or corpus-specific relations

Finally, any particular implementation or installation of the PML-TQ query engine can extend the language by defining and implementing additional specific relations. The relations behave syntactically as the built-in relations and must use different names than the built-in relations (their name can be followed by a pair of colons `::` in order to distinguish them from a PML reference relation).

The current implementation defines two relations specific for the PDT 2.0 annotation: `echild` and `eparent`. These relations can be used both on tectogrammatical and analytical layer and represent the effective dependency, rather than technical dependency represented by the built-in relations `child` and `parent`. Thus, they abstract from certain constructions such as coordination and apposition as well as the dominance of prepositions (`afun="AuxP"`) and connectives (`afun="AuxC"`) on the analytical layer.

Here are a few examples of queries using these relations:

    # a semantic verb with an ACT(or) and EFF(ect)
    t-node [
      gram/sempos='v',
      echild t-node [ functor='ACT' ],
      echild t-node [ functor='EFF' ],
    ]

    # a t-node with two effective parents (common modifier of coordinated nodes)
    t-node [
      eparent t-node [ ],
      eparent t-node [ ],
    ]

    # a verb with no actant
    t-node $a := [ gram/sempos='v',
      ! echild t-node [ functor in { 'ACT','PAT','ADDR','ORIG','EFF' } ]
    ]

    # reversed effective dependency on a-layer and t-layer
    # excluding numeric constructions
    a-node $A := [
      m/tag !~ '^C',
      echild a-node $B := [
        m/tag !~ '^C'
      ]
    ];
    t-node [
      a/lex.rf $B,
      echild t-node [ a/lex.rf $A ]
    ];

Just like PML reference relations, specific relations can be used in the transitive form by setting minimum and maximum bounds, for example:

    # effective descendant
    t-node [ echild{1,} t-node [ ] ]

    # effective grand-grand child
    t-node [ echild{2,2} t-node [ ] ]

### Querying labeled references using the `member` selector

The member selector is useful for querying some types of complex-valued node attributes, e.g. lists of complex structures. Such attributes do not occur in PDT 2.0, but do occur for example in CoNLL-2009 Shared Task data when converted to PML.

Each node in CoNLL-2009 ST data can be annotated as an argument of some other node, called predicate. The argument node carries an attribute `apreds` which is a list of all predicates it belongs to. The list consists of structures with two members: a PML reference to the predicate node (`apreds/target.rf`) and an argument label `apreds/label`. The set of argument labels differs from language to language; for Czech data, the labels correspond to tectogrammatical functors and the predicates to effective parents.

So, each structure in the list represents one labeled semantic relation. To be able to combine constraints on the target node (predicate) with the label of the relation that points to it, we must use a feature of PML-TQ called `member` selectors.

The following example finds a PAT argument and its corresponding predicate:

    node $arg := [
      member apreds [
        label = 'PAT',
        target.rf node $pred := [ ]
      ]
    ]

The intermediate `member` selector matches one element of the `apreds` list at a time and tests its label. If the label matches, the nested node selector for the `target.rf` PML-reference relation takes action.

More details and further examples are given in .

### Subqueries (testing existence, non-existence and number of occurrences)

Sometimes it is useful to test existence, non-existence or number of occurrences of a node related to our query. For example, to find all predicates without a subject in PDT 2.0, we could use the following query

    a-node [ afun='Pred', 0x echild a-node [ afun='Sb' ] ]

The query finds an a-node with `afun='Pred'` that has no effective children with `afun='Sb'`. This is expressed using a selector preceded by a restriction on number of occurrences (0x - zero times), which is called a subquery.

To create a subquery graphically in TrEd, simply create the selector `echild a-node [ afun='Sb' ]` as usual and then, with the corresponding query subtree selected, press x or

Occurrences
.

Of course, we could constrain the number of occurrences to a non-zero value, too. For example, to find all predicates that govern one subject or one object, but not both, we could use the following query:

    a-node [ afun='Pred', 1x echild a-node [ afun in {'Sb','Obj'} ] ]

The nodes matched by subqueries are not part of the result match (in our example, the match would consist of the predicate nodes only, the subjects or objects would not be included).

The number of occurrences of a subquery can be constrained not only to a single number (0 in our example) but to any finite union of bounded or partially unbounded intervals of positive integers; e.g. `0|2..4|6+x` restricts the number of occurrences to zero, two to four, or six or more, eliminating one and five. While the plus sign stands for or more, the minus sign means or less, as in `4-x` (occurring four or less times).

Subqueries are also created using boolean operators, such as negation:

    a-node [ afun='Pred', ! echild a-node [ afun='Sb' ] ]

In this example, the selector `! echild a-node [ afun='Sb' ]` is automatically turned into a (still negated) subquery with one and more occurrences; the query becomes:

    a-node [ afun='Pred', ! 1+x echild a-node [ afun='Sb' ] ]

To create this query graphically, create the selector `echild a-node [ afun='Sb' ]` as usual, then select the query node corresponding to `a-node [ afun='Pred' ]`, create a negation node (press ! or

NOT
) and drag the query subtree corresponding to the subject onto the negation node.

A common use of subqueries is also constraining nodes on a descending path from one node to another. Let us for example formulate a query searching for a descending chain of tectogrammatical nodes with the functor `RSTR` (restrictive or descriptive abdominal modification). We want the chain to satisfy the following conditions:

1. The chain is connected to a node `$N` which is a semantic noun (`gram/sempos ~ "^n"`) and has other functor than `RSTR`

2. The chain is at least 3 nodes long.

3. The descending chain ends with a node `$R` with the functor `RSTR`

4. The chain cannot descend beyond `$R`, i.e. `$R` has no child node with the functor `RSTR`.

5. All nodes that belong to the chain have the functor `RSTR`

The corresponding query looks like this:

    t-node $N:= [
      # condition .
      gram/sempos ~ "^n",
      functor != "RSTR",

      # conditions . and .
      descendant{3,} t-node $R := [
        functor = "RSTR",
        # condition .
        0x  t-node [ functor = "RSTR" ]
      ],

      # condition .
      0x descendant t-node [
        !functor = "RSTR",
        descendant $R
      ],
    ];

Note how the condition . is expressed: we say that there is no descendant of $N dominating $R whose `functor` would not equal `RSTR`. Thus, we have rewritten the original condition of the form \[\forall x C(x,N,R) \]

∀x C(x,N,R)
as \[\neg\exists x \neg C(x,N,R) \]
¬ ∃x ¬C(x,N,R)
.

### Looking for small result trees?

Sometimes you want to find a good small example tree demonstrating some linguistic phenomenon. You want it to fit to a presentation slide or an article page. You can do so by putting a limit on the tree size.

Using a subquery this can be done as follows:

    t-node [
      10-x same-tree-as t-node [],
      functor='DPHR', # the rest of your query
    ]

This selects t-nodes with `functor='DPHR'` in trees with at most 10 other t-nodes. Using functions, this can be written as

    t-root [
      descendants() <= 10,
      descendant t-node [ functor='DPHR' ]
    ]

but note that in this case the `t-root` appears as a node in the result set. To avoid it, we can write

    t-node [
      functor='DPHR',
      1x ancestor t-root [ descendants() <= 10 ]
    ]

For treebanks that do not have a special node type for the root node, we can write e.g.:

    node [
      functor='DPHR',
      1x ancestor node [
        depth() = 0, # the root
        descendants() <= 10
      ]
    ]

### Functions

PML-TQ provides a set of built-in functions that can be used in expressions constraining nodes and also in output filters. The functions can be split into the following categories:

- functions returning information about the tree structure

- functions related information about documents

- string functions

- numerical functions

- group functions (applicable only in output filters)

For description of all individual functions, refer to . Here, we only give a few examples demonstrating the use of some of the functions from the first category on a few common query constructions, usually also expressible by means of subqueries. Whether it is more efficient to use functions than subqueries may depend on implementation.

    # a leaf node (using functions)
    t-node [ sons()=0 ]

The above query can be created graphically in TrEd by creating a `t-node` selector (press Insert or

Add node
on the toolbar and select a node type (t-node in our example) from the list), then create an equality constraint by pressing = or
Equality
and fill-in `sons()` as a and `0` as a.

Alternatively, type the query in the text form editor (opened by pressing e or

Edit query
). The function names with argument templates can be inserted using the Functions button in the editor.

Other queries involving functions can be created similarly.

    # a leaf node (using a subquery)
    t-node [ 0x child t-node [ ] ]

    # right-most child
    t-node [ rbrothers()=0 ]

    # left-most child
    t-node [ lbrothers()=0 ]

    # first leaf node in a subtree of $t (using functions)
    t-node $t := [
      descendant t-node [
        sons()=0,
        depth_first_order()-depth()=depth_first_order($t)-depth($t)
      ]
    ]

    # first leaf node in a subtree of $t (using a subquery)
    t-node $t := [
      descendant t-node $d := [ sons()=0 ],
      0x descendant [ sons()=0, depth-first-precedes $d ],
    ]

    # last leaf node in a subtree of $t
    t-node $t := [
      descendant t-node [
        sons()=0,
        depth_first_order()-depth()=depth_first_order($t)+descendants($t)-1-depth($t)
      ]
    ]

    # last leaf node in a subtree of $t (using a subquery)
    t-node $t := [
      descendant t-node $d := [ sons()=0 ],
      0x descendant [ depth-first-follows $d ],
    ]

### Output filters

Output filters are used for extracting data from the nodes matched by the query and generating tabular output. Filters must follow the selective part of the query and start with `>>`. Filters can be chained: the first filter extracts data from the matching nodes and all subsequent filters operate on the output from the immediately preceding filter. Details can be found in the PML-TQ Syntax Reference and .

The TrEd GUI does not provide any graphical builder for output-filter nor does it represent the filters graphically. To enter a filter, open the entire query in the query editor (press Ctrl E or

Edit query
on the toolbar), place the cursor at the end of the query and enter the filter code. Various buttons in the editor can be used to insert special symbols, and templates for functions and common constructions.

One of the simplest filters uses the group function `count()` to compute the total number of matches of the query in the treebank:

    # counting occurrences
    t-node [ functor='DPHR' ]
    >> count()

The group functions `min()`, `max()`, and `avg()`, can be used to compute maximum, minimum, and average values of data extracted from the matching nodes. For example: to compute a maximum number of child nodes of a t-node with the functor `DPHR`, we can use the following:

    t-node $n := [ functor='DPHR' ]
    >> max(sons($n))

The following query computes maximum, minimum and average size of a tectogrammatical tree:

    t-root $n := [ ]
    >> descendants($n)
    >> max(), min(), avg()

The above query uses two filters: the first extracts the number of descendants from each node matched by the selector `$n`, the second computes maximum, minimum and average value from the values returned by the first filter.

The following query shows a common grouping construction using the 'for' clause. It extracts the attribute `functor` from the matched nodes and for each distinct value counts the number it occurred:

    t-node $n := [ ]
    >> for $n.functor
       give $1, count()

Note that `$1` in the `give` clause refers to the first (and only) key used in the `for` clause, i.e. to `$n.functor`.

By appending a `sort by` clause to a filter, we may reorder the rows it produces by some of its columns. In the following query, the output of the filter is sorted using the second output column (the `count()`) in descendant order as the primary key and the first output column (the `$1` in the `give` clause) in the default (ascending) order:

    t-node $n := [ ]
    >> for $n.functor
       give $1, count()
       sort by $2 desc, $1

The `for` clause can be used to create groups not only by attribute values, but also by some of the matching nodes. For example, in order to find out how many grammatical-coreference links can start in one tectogrammatical node, we may use the following query:

    t-node $referring := [
      coref_gram.rf t-node $referred := [  ]
    ];
    >>  for $referring give count()
    >> max()

The selective part of the query matches every pair of tectogrammatical nodes that are linked by a grammatical-coreference link. The first filter groups the resulting pairs of nodes by the first of the nodes (`$referring`) and outputs the number of pairs in each group; this is the number of grammatical-coreference links starting in the node `$referring`. The second filter simply computes the maximum of the values returned by the first filter.

The `for` clause partitions all input rows into groups before any further processing and the subsequent `give` clause then produces one output row for each group, letting all group functions, such as `count()`, `min()`, `max()`, etc. operate on the particular group.

PML-TQ further supports a syntax that allows different partitions to be defined for different group function and also let the `give` clause operate on all input rows. This is done by following the function arguments by an `over` clause. Here we show an example where we use one of the ranking group functions (`row_number()`) to select just a few top ranking rows from each group. Please refer to for more examples.

In the following query we extract the syntactic label (`afun`) and the part of speech (the first position of the morphological tag) from every node on the analytical (morphosyntactical) layer of PDT 2.0. Then we apply further filters to output in order to obtain the three most frequent parts of speech for each `afun`. If several parts of speech occur the same number of times for a given afun, we sample those three that come first alphabetically.

    a-node $a:= [ ]
    >> $a.afun, substr($a.m/tag,0,1)  # get afun and part of speech (POS)
    >> for $1,$2 give $1, $2, count() # count occurrences of POS for each afun
    >> $1, $2, row_number(over $1 sort by $3 desc, $2) # get the rank of each POS over the afun
       sort by $1, $3
    >> filter $3 <= 3
    >> $1, $2, $3

## User Interfaces

### Graphical interface in TrEd

A complete graphical user interface for PML-TQ is available as an extension to the tree editor TrEd and provides the following features:

- interactive graphical query builder

- intelligent text query editor

- client interface for remote PML-TQ search server

- built-in sequential search engine for local files

- visualization of resulting trees and documents

- multiple views for queries spanning over several layers or trees

- query history (queries stored in a local file)

To use this interface, start by downloading and installing the tree editor TrEd from . The PML-TQ interface is available as an extension called PML Tree Query Interface for TrEd (pmltq) which can be either selected during installation of TrEd (on Windows) or from TrEd as follows:

1. Start TrEd

2. Select Setup Manage Extensions ... from the main menu

3. In the extension manager dialog press Get New Extensions button (connection to the Internet is required at this point).

4. In the list of available extensions locate an extension titled PML Tree Query Interface for TrEd (pmltq) and check the Install checkbutton beside it.

5. If you intend to query some treebanks for which a specific TrEd extension is provided, such as Prague Dependency Treebank 2.0, Penn Treebank, Penn Arabic Treebank, Tiger Corpus, CoNLL 2009 Shared Task data set etc, check those extensions as well.

6. Press the Install Selected button, wait for the installation to complete and close the extension manager with the Close button.

See for a quick introduction to the query interface.

### Web interface

The PML-TQ search servers provide a client interface in the form of a web application that can be accessed by any web browser capable of combining JavaScript, CSS, and SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics). At the time of writing this tutorial, the best choice is the Opera browser, followed by Google Chrome, Firefox, and Safari (please avoid Microsoft Internet Explorer because it lacks native SVG support).

Unlike the TrEd interface, this interface does not require any installation, but lacks some features such as graphical query builder and graphical representation of the query (the queries must be entered in the text form), and of course does not support querying local files. The history of past queries is available for queries run on the particular PML-TQ search service.

For a quick introduction to the query language, see (only the text version of the queries is applicable).

To start using the web interface, simply open the PML-TQ server URL in a web browser, enter your query and press Submit New Query.

The Opera browser displaying a query and a result tree

Results of queries with output filters are displayed as an HTML table, queries without filters are rendered using SVG with the matching nodes highlighted by colours. A simple toolbar is displayed above the tree, with buttons for scaling the SVG image and displaying next, Nth, or previous match. For each matching node a button in a corresponding color is created above the displayed tree; by pressing the button, the tree containing the particular node can be displayed, which is useful for queries whose match can span across several trees or several annotation layers (see Below the toolbar, the file name, tree number, total number of trees in the file and the sentence (or other kind of textual representation) of the tree is displayed. The `<` and `>` links preceding the file name can be used to display neighboring trees from the same document.

### Command-line interface

PML-TQ comes with a command-line client utility called `pmltq`. The tool can be used to perform queries remotely (by connecting to a remote PML-TQ search engine) or locally (using one of the tools that come with the TrEd toolkit: `btred`, `ntred`, and `jtred`).

Currently this client is able to produces plain-text output only, so it is best used in connection with queries that provide output filters.

TODO: general usage yet to be documented. Run

    pmltq --help

to display information about the program command-line options and usage.

### BTrEd interface

## Query Language

Basic examples, syntax reference.

### Common syntax constructions

Selectors

`TYPE [ ... ]` | Selector for nodes of a given type (list of types depends on the treebank)
`TYPE $a := [ ... ]` | Named selector (can be referred to as `$a`)

Node relationships

`TYPE $a := [ child TYPE $b:= [ ] ]` | `$b` is a child of `$a`
`TYPE $a := [ child TYPE $b:= [ lbrothers()=0 ] ]` | `$b` is the first child of `$a`
`TYPE $a := [ child TYPE $b:= [ lbrothers()=N-1 ] ]` | `$b` is the N-th child of `$a`
`TYPE $a := [ child TYPE $b:= [ rbrothers()=0 ] ]` | `$b` is the last child of `$a`
`TYPE $a := [ child TYPE $b:= [ rbrothers()=N-1 ] ]` | `$b` is the N-th to last child of `$a`
`TYPE $a := [ children()=1, child TYPE $b:= [ ] ]` | `$b` is the only child of `$a`
`TYPE $a := [ parent TYPE $b:= [ ] ]` | `$b` is the parent `$a`
`TYPE $a := [ ancestor TYPE $b:= [ ] ]` | `$b` dominates `$a` (`$b` is an ancestor of `$a`)
`TYPE $a := [ ancestor{1,2} TYPE $b:= [ ] ]` | `$b` is the parent or grand parent of `$a`
`TYPE $a := [ descendant TYPE $b:= [ ] ]` | `$b` is dominated by `$a` (`$b` is a descendant of `$a`)
`TYPE $a := [ descendant{1,2} TYPE $b:= [ ] ]` | `$b` is the child or grand child `$a`
`TYPE $a := [ descendant TYPE $b:= [ ], 0x descendant [ order-precedes $b ] ]` | `$b` is a left-most descendant `$a`
`TYPE $a := [ descendant TYPE $b:= [ ], 0x descendant [ order-follows $b ] ]` | `$b` is a right-most descendant `$a`
`TYPE $a := [ sibling TYPE $b:= [ ] ]` | `$b` is the sibling `$a`
`TYPE $a := [ sibling{,-1} TYPE $b:= [ ] ]` | `$b` is the preceding sibling of `$a`
`TYPE $a := [ sibling{-1,-1} TYPE $b:= [ ] ]` | `$b` is the immediately preceding sibling of `$a`
`TYPE $a := [ sibling{1,} TYPE $b:= [ ] ]` | `$b` is the following sibling `$a`
`TYPE $a := [ sibling{1,1} TYPE $b:= [ ] ]` | `$b` is the immediately following sibling of `$a`
`TYPE $a := [ same-tree-as TYPE $b:= [ ] ]` | `$b` belongs to the same tree as `$a`
`TYPE $a := [ order-follows TYPE $b:= [ ] ]` | `$b` belongs to the same tree as `$a` and follows `$a`
`TYPE $a := [ order-follows{1,1} TYPE $b:= [ ] ]` | `$b` belongs to the same tree as `$a` and immediately follows `$a`
`TYPE $a := [ order-precedes TYPE $b:= [ ] ]` | `$b` belongs to the same tree as `$a` and precedes `$a`
`TYPE $a := [ order-follows{1,1} TYPE $b:= [ ] ]` | `$b` belongs to the same tree as `$a` and immediately precedes `$a`
`TYPE $a := [ order-follows{-1,1} TYPE $b:= [ ] ]` | `$b` belongs to the same tree as `$a` and either immediately precedes or immediately follows `$a`
`TYPE $a := [ same-document-as TYPE $b:= [ ] ]` | `$b` belongs to the same document as `$a`

Logical expressions

Value comparison

Arithmetical and string operators

Subquery and number of occurrences

Functions

Output filters

### PML-TQ Syntax Reference

query
  query : (nodeSelector + ';') ( ';' (outputFilter*) )? ;

  PML-TQ query consists of one or more node selectors separated by semicolon followed, optionally, by a list of output filters.

nodeSelector
  nodeSelector : TYPE (variable ':=' )? \\ '[' constraints? ']' ;

  Defines a node selector that selects all nodes of type type that satisfy given constraints. The selector can optionally be associated with a variable for reference from other nodes.

  The intended way to translate the selector syntax to English is to read node of type TYPE that has constraint-1, has constraint-2, ... and has constraint-N

  A selector can be used as a constraint of some other selector (i.e. it can be nested). If not preceded by a name of a relation, it selects among child nodes of the node matched by the containing selector; if preceded by a name of a relation, it selects among nodes that are in the particular relation to the node matched by the containing selector.

  For example, the query `a-node $x := [ descendant a-node [ afun=$x.afun ] ]` reads in English as Find a node `$x` of type a-node that has a descendant node of type a-node that has `afun` equal to `afun` of `$x`. Over PDT 2.0 data it selects all analytical nodes whose subtree contains an analytical node with the same value of the attribute `afun` (the query returns pairs of nodes with the described relationship).

variable
  variable : DOLLAR NAME

  Variables are used to name node selectors and refer to them from other parts of the query. Variable starts with a '`$`' (dollar) character and is followed by a NAME consisting of alphabetical character or underscore and zero or more alphanumerical characters or underscores. For example, `$foo_02` or `$x` are valid variable names, while `$23` is not.

constraints
  constraints : constraint + ',';

  One or more constraints.

constraint
  constraint : ( ('!')? (predicate | relationSelector | optionalSelector | memberSelector | relation variable | subquery | '(' constraint ')' ) | '+'? relationSelector | (constraint ('and' | 'or' | ',' ) constraint)) ; relationSelector : relation? nodeSelector ;

  The logical operators have the following precedence (in decreasing order): '`!`', '`and`', '`or`', '`,`'; except for having the lowest precedence, comma (`,`) has the semantics of `and`. A constraint is either a binary test predicate (`=`, `!=`, `~`, `!~`, `<`, `<=`, `>` etc.) on expressions (terms), a node selector, member selector, subquery, a reference to a named node selector (indicating that a node matched by referred selector must be in the corresponding relation to the node matched by the current selector), or a logical combination of any of these. However, a node selector used in a complex logical expression is treated as a subquery with at least one occurrence.

  The intended way of reading a constraint aloud in English in the context of a node selector is to precede it with the word has.

  By default only distinct nodes are matched by the query. If however the relationSelector is denoted by `+` the matched nodes do not have to be disjoint from the other nodes matched by the query. This is usefull for printing the whole sentences like in the following example:

      a-node
      [ afun = 'AuxV',
           ancestor a-root $r :=
           [ + descendant a-node $a := [  ] ] ];
        >> for $r.id,$a.m/form,$a.ord give $1,$2,$3
        >> give distinct concat($2, ' ' over $1 sort by $3)

  This example prints the sentences with an auxiliary verb (afun='AuxV'). The first matched node won't be among descendants of the root node unless the selector is denoted by `+`.
optionalSelector
  optionalSelector : '?' relation? nodeSelector;

  If a nested node selector is preceded by a question mark, it is optional. This means, that if no node matches this selector, the selector is assumed to match the same node as its containing selector and all selectors or subqueries directly nested in the optional selector are then evaluated as if they were nested in the containing selector. For example, `a-node $a := [ afun='Sb', ? a-node $b:= [ afun='AuxC', $c := [ afun='Obj'] ] ]` with $b optional, matches either a descending chain of three a-nodes 'Sb->AuxC->Obj' (the optional selector $b matching the middle node) or just the pair 'Sb->Obj', in which case both $a and $b are identified with the 'Sb' (the constraint `afun='AuxC'`) on $b is disregarded), but it does not, for instance, match a descending chain 'Sb->ExD->Obj'.

member selector
  memberSelector : 'member' attributePath (variable ':=' )? \\ '[' constraints? ']'

  Member selector can be used to match complex values in node attributes of alternative, list, or sequence type. The selected value is then treated almost as a node. Although we do not indicate it explicitly in the syntax, member selectors cannot nest node selectors via tree-structure or ordering relations.

  Member selectors are described in detail more in .

subquery
  subquery : occurrences 'x' ( memberSelector | relation? nodeSelector ); occurrences : ( NUMBER | NUMBER '+' | NUMBER '-' | NUMBER '..' NUMBER ) + '|';

  Subquery is a nested selector with a constraint on the number of occurrences of the matching nodes (with respect to a fixed match of the containing selector). For example, `3x` specifies that the subquery must match exactly three times, `3+x` specifies that it must match at least three times, `3-x` specifies it must match at most three times, and `3-10x` specifies that it must match at least three times and at most ten times.

  Node selectors that belong to a subquery cannot be referred to by name from outside the subquery (outer scope).

relation
  relation : treeRelation | orderingRelation | pmlRefRelation | implementationSpecificRelation ;

  PML-TQ has the following types of relation:

  tree relations
    treeRelation : ( 'child' | 'parent' | 'same-tree-as' | 'descendant' distanceInterval? | 'ancestor' distanceInterval? | 'sibling' distanceInterval?) '::'? ; distanceInterval : LEFTBRACE NUMBER? ',' NUMBER? RIGHTBRACE ;

    These are child, parent, descendant, ancestor, and sibling. The last three can be followed by a distance interval of the forms `{min,max}`, or `{,max}`, or `{min,}` where `min` and `max` are integers with `min` less than or equal to `max`. These values must be positive for the relations `descendant` and `ancestor`. For the `sibling` relation, negative distance bound values range over preceding siblings and positive bound values range over following siblings.

    For example, in the query

        t-node $a := [ sibling{-1,2} t-node $b := [ ] ]

    the node `$b` can be either the immediately preceding sibling of `$a` or one of the two siblings immediately following `$a`.

    In the query

        t-node $a := [ descendant{3,} t-node $b := [ ] ]

    `$b` matches a descendant of `$a` such that there are at least two nodes on the path from $a to $b strictly between $a to $b.
  ordering relations
    orderingRelation : ('depth-first-precedes' | 'depth-first-follows' | 'order-precedes' | 'order-follows') distanceInterval? '::'? ;

    Relations `depth-first-precedes` and `depth-first-follows` constraint mutual position of two nodes in the canonical depth first ordering of the tree.

    Relations `order-precedes`, `order-follows` are only available for treebanks with explicit total ordering on the trees (typically dependency treebanks).

    These relations can be followed by a distance interval of the forms `{min,max}`, or `{,max}`, or `{min,}` where `min` and `max` are (possibly negative) integers, with `min` less than or equal to `max`.

    For example, in

        t-node $a := [ depth-first-precedes t-node $b := [ order-precedes $a ] ]

    `$a` matches a node that precedes `$b` in the depth-first order but follows `$b` in the total ordering of the tree; thus, for instance, `$b` can be a descendant of `$a` that precedes `$a`.

    In the following query, `$a` must immediately precede `$b` in the total ordering of the tree:

        t-node $a := [ order-precedes{,1} t-node $b := [ ] ]

    Conversely, in

        t-node $a := [ order-precedes{2,} t-node $b := [ ] ]

    `$a` precedes `$b`, but there must be at least one other node between the nodes `$a` and `$b`. The query

        t-node $a := [ order-precedes{1,2} t-node $b := [ ] ]

    allows at most one node between `$a` and `$b` in the total ordering of the tree.

    Negative distance bound extends the relation in the opposite direction. For example, in this query:

        t-node $a := [ order-precedes{-1,1} t-node $b := [ ] ]

    `$a` either immediately precedes `$b` or immediately follows `$b`.
  relations based on PML-references
    pmlRefRelation : attributePath '->'? ;

    These relations represent ID-based references. They are derived from attributes declared in the specific PML schema of the treebank as PML references and represent the relation from a referring node (the one containing the reference) to the referenced node (the one whose ID the reference contains).

    The name of the relation is an attribute path to a PML reference (declared in the PML schema as `<cdata format="PMLREF"/>`).

    For example, nodes of the type `t-node` in PDT 2.0 are structures declares as follows:

          <type name="t-node.type">
            <structure role="#NODE" name="t-node">
              ...
              <member name="a">
                <structure>
                  <member name="lex.rf">
                    <cdata format="PMLREF"/>
                  </member>
                  <member name="aux.rf">
                    <list ordered="0">
                      <cdata format="PMLREF"/>
                    </list>
                  </member>
                </structure>
              </member>
              ...
            </structure>
          </type>

    So, for a `t-node`, the attribute paths `a/lex.rf` and `a/aux.rf` refer to PML references. They represent a pointer to a lexical counterpart node on the analytical layer, and zero or more pointers to related auxiliary nodes on the analytical layer (prepositions, conjunctions, auxiliary verbs, etc.). We can thus use these relations as follows:

        t-node $t:= [ a/lex.rf a-node $a:= [ afun='Sb' ], a/aux.rf a-node $x:= [ afun = 'AuxP' ] ]

    The query locates a `t-node` `$t` whose lexical counterpart on the analytical layer is the node `$b` with `afun='Sb'` and that contains at least one pointer to an auxiliary node `$x` with `afun='AuxP'` (a preposition).

    Since the names of node attributes may be in collision with other types of relations, we may force interpreting a relation as a `pmlRefRelation` by following it by the characters `->`.

  implementation specific relations
    implementationSpecificRelation : NAME distanceInterval? '::'? ;

    An implementation can choose to provide further set of relations provided that their names are not in collision with the tree relations and ordering relations.

    For example, the standard implementation of PML-TQ defines relations `echild` and `eparent` for the PDT 2.0 treebank to represent so called effective-parent and effective-child relations.

    These relations can be optionally followed by an interval bounding the number of transitive applications of the relation. It can be of the forms `{min,max}`, or `{,max}`, or `{min,}` where `min` and `max` are positive integers, with `min` less than or equal to `max`.

    For example, `eparent{1,}` is a transitive closure of the `eparent` relation (i.e.\ effective ancestor). Similarly, in

        t-node $a:=[ echild{1,2} $b:=[] ]

    the node `$a` must be an effective parent or effective parent of an effective grand parent of `$b`. The queries

        t-node $a:=[ echild $b:=[] ]

    and

        t-node $a:=[ echild{1,1} $b:=[] ]

    are equivalent.

  All relation names except for PML-reference relations can be followed by two colons in cases that could lead to syntactical ambiguity (e.g. if they can be confused with node types). PML-reference relations can be followed by an arrow (a dash and greater-than characters) to avoid confusion with other relations, node types, or keywords.

predicate
  predicate : binaryComparison | setPredicate; binaryComparison : expression ( ('!'? ('=' | TILDA | TILDASTAR )) | '<' | '>' | '<=' | '>=') expression ; setPredicate : (expression '!'? 'in' LEFTBRACE (expression +',') RIGHTBRACE) ;

  A predicate is either a binary comparison of two expressions (terms) or a set membership predicate applied to a term and a set specified as an enumeration of other terms.

  The binary comparison consists of two expressions and a binary relation. The relations `~` and `~*` perform case-sensitive and case-insensitive regular expression matching, respectively. The expression on the right must evaluate to a regular expression. For example `afun ~ '^(Sb|Aux.*)$'` is true if the value of the attribute `afun` of the current node selector either equals to the string `Sb` or starts with the string `Aux`.

  Set predicate consists of a expression, the operator `in` and a comma-separated list of expressions enclosed in braces. It is true if the value computed from the expression on the left equals some of the values computed from the expressions on the right of the operator.

expression
  expression : (literal | attributePath | function | '(' expression ')') + ('+' | '-' | '*' | 'div' | 'mod' | AMP) ;

  Expressions are either literals (strings, integer of floating point numbers), attribute paths, or functions, or any combination of these obtain by application of the binary string-concatenation operator ('&') or the usual arithmetical operations for addition ('+'), subtraction ('-'), multiplication ('*'), division ('div') and modulo ('mod'). Brackets can be used in the usual manner for grouping sub-expressions.

  For example, `afun & "." & substr(m/tag,0,2)` is an expression returning a concatenation of the value of the attribute `afun`, a dot and the first two characters from the value of the attribute `m/tag`.

literal
  literal : NUMBER | '"' STRING '"' | "'" STRING "'" ;

  A literal is either a number in the decimal notation (integer or floating point, e.g. `231` or `-1.0032`) or a string of characters enclosed in either `"` or `'`. Backslash character `\` is used as an escape character, for example to insert a quote or apostrophe.

  For example: `"Peter's"` and `'Peter\'s'` are both literals representing the string `Peter's`. Similarly, `'\\\"\'\n\r\1'` and `"\\\"\'\n\r\1"` are literals representing the five-character string `\"'nr1`. (Note that `\n` is not currently used for the new-line characters as in many other dialects; this however, may change in a future version so it is adviced to avoid escaping characters other than quote and apostrophe).

attributePath
  attributePath : '*'? (variable '.' )? (XMLNAME | 'content()' | index | elementIndex ) + '/' ; index : '[' NUMBER ']'; elementIndex : XMLNAME index | index XMLNAME;

  An attribute path refers to a value of an attribute of a treebank node matched by a certain selector. If the path starts with a variable followed by a '.' (dot) character, then the it refers to an attribute of the node matched by the selector associated with the variable. Otherwise it refers to the node matched by the current selector (i.e. the one within whose constraints it occurs).

  In the simplest form, attribute path is just a name of an attribute, e.g. `functor`. However, some node attributes may have complex values, i.e. structures with attributes of their own. In such case one forms a slash-delimited attribute path leading from the node to some nested atomic value. Each component of the path (step) is either a

  name

    specifying a member in a structure or any element of the given name in a sequence

  the string `'content()'`

    used for obtaining the content of a container

  index (`[n]`)

    specifying n-th element in an ordered list

  name followed by an index (`foo[n]`)

    specifying n-th element of a given name (`foo`) in a sequence

  name preceded by an index (`[n]foo`)

    specifying n-th element in a sequence and asserting that the n-th element name is as given (`foo`)

  If a partial attribute path returns an object of a list type, the next step in the path can either be an index or can be omitted (in which case any list member matches); if it returns a sequence, the next step must be an element name optionally followed or preceded by an index. If it is a structure or container, the next step must be a name of an attribute; if it returns an alternative or an unordered list, the next step must be a valid step for the members of the alternative/list; if it returns an atomic value, there must be no further step.

  For example `gram/sempos` selects the attribute `sempos` of a structure stored in the attribute `gram` of the node matched by the current selector. The path `a/[1]/b` may select an attribute b of a structure stored in the 2nd member of an ordered list stored in the attribute `a`; the path `a/b` selects the attribute b of any member of the list `a`.

  If some part of an attribute path leads to an alternative, list, or sequence, the path may match multiple values. Assume R is some predicate containing such an attribute path in some of its expressions. If attribute path is preceded by the `*` character (a primitive universal quantifier), then the predicate is true if and only if it is true for every value matched by the attribute path. If attribute path is not preceded by `*`, then an existential quantifier is assumed: the predicate is true if and only if there exists a value matched by the attribute path for which the predicate is true. If the predicate contains more such attribute paths, the quantifiers (universal and implicit existential) are applied in the same order in which the attribute paths occur in the predicate. See for details.

  Example:

      a-node $p:= [ child a-node [ afun=$p.afun, afun~'^Aux' ] ]

  The above query selects a node and its child node (both of type `a-node`) that have the same value of the attribute `afun` and the value starts with the substring `Aux`.
function
  function : FUNCTION '(' (expression + ',' ) ')' ;

  Functions are written as function name followed by a comma-separated list of its arguments in brackets. The functions currently supported by PML-TQ are listed in Section :

outputFilter
  outputFilter : '>>' ('for' (columnExp + ',') 'give' | ('give')?) ('distinct')? (columnExp + ',') \\ (('>>')? 'sort by' ((DOLLAR NUMBER ('asc'|'desc')?) + ','))? \\ ('>>' 'filter' rowConstraint *); rowConstraint : ( ('!')? (rowBinaryComparison | rowSetPredicate | '(' rowConstraint ')') ) | (rowConstraint ('and' | 'or' | ',' ) rowConstraint) ; rowBinaryComparison : columnExp ( ('!'? ('=' | TILDA | TILDASTAR )) | '<' | '>' | '<=' | '>=') columnExp ; rowSetPredicate : (columnExp '!'? 'in' LEFTBRACE (literal +',') RIGHTBRACE) ;

  An output filter transforms its input (the result of the selective part of the query or the output of the previous filter) into a table of values arranged into columns computed according to the filter specification.

  The simplest form of a filter consists of a comma-separated list of expressions, each of which computes a column value in an output row from either the values of (some) column of the input row (output from the previous filter) or, in case of the first filter, the attributes of nodes matched by the selective part of the query. For example:

      >> $x.m/tag, depth($y)
      >> 'found ' & $1 & ' at depth ' & $2

  defines two output filters: the first returns a table whose rows correspond directly to the matches of the query's selective part. Its first column contains the value of the attribute `m/tag` of the node matched by the node selector `$x` and the second column is the depth of the node matched by the node selector `$y`. The second output filter produces a table with just one column with values of the form `found X at depth Y`, where X and Y represent the two columns from the preceding filter.

  The column expressions can also use group functions that do not specify partitioning (using an `over` clause) and therefore range over the whole input table. In that case, all column expressions must result in constant values and the filter will produce a single row.

  For example,

      >>min($1), max($1), avg($1)

  is an output filter that computes the minimum, maximum and average form the values in the first column of the preceding filter (and returns a table with exactly one row having these three values in its three columns).

  Each filter may be followed by a `>> sort by` clause which specifies the order of rows in the resulting table. The clause is followed by a comma-separated list of column references. They refer to the columns of the table produced by this filter and are used to compute the primary, secondary, tertiary,… etc. sorting key. Each column reference can be followed by the word `asc` or `desc` to enforce ascendant (default) or descendant ordering on the corresponding column.

  The filter may optionally be preceded by a `for` clause that partitions the input rows into groups according to given keys and produces one output row for each group; any group function occurring in the output column expression will range over the current group.

  The `for` clause consists of a set of column expressions used to compute a vector of values from each input row. This vector serves as a key by which the input rows are partitioned into groups. The `give` clause now produces one output row for each group. Note that the column references occurring in the `give` clause are interpreted as references to the columns of the key vector, except for the case of column references occurring in arguments of group functions (that do not declare its own partitioning using an `over` clause), which refer to the columns of the input rows within the current group.

  For example:

      a-node $a:= [ child a-node $b := [] ];
      >> for $a.afun, $b.afun
      give $1, $2, count()
      sort by $3 desc

  is a query whose selective part returns pairs of a-nodes in the parent-child relationship. The output filter first computes a key, in this case a vector of two of values: the attribute `afun` of the parent and the child. Then it groups the results according to this key and for each group returns a row consisting of three values: the two columns from the key vector (`$1, $2` and the number of elements in the corresponding group (`count()`). The `sort by` clause reorders this output by the third column in descendant order. As a result we get the frequency table of co-occurrence of `afun` attribute values on an edge in the treebank with the most frequent `afun` pairs first, which may look like this:

      Atr     Atr     87306
      AuxP    Adv     56344
      Sb      Atr     56269
      Obj     Atr     51908
      Adv     Atr     48741
      Pred    Sb      44963
      Pred    AuxP    39125
      Pred    Obj     31744
      AuxP    Atr     31227
      Coord   Atr     30569
      Coord   Pred    24739
      Pred    Adv     24196
      ...

  A filter can further be followed by one or more `>> filter` clauses which drop certain output rows, leaving only those rows that satisfy a specific constraint. For example, the following query

      a-node $n:= [ ]
      # Filter 1
      >> give lower($n.m/form)
      >> filter $1 ~ '^[a-z]'

      # Filter 2
      >> for $1 give $1,count()
      >> filter $2 >= 1000

      # Filter 3
      >> give $1,$2 sort by $2 desc

  retrieves a list frequent word forms from a treebank. The selective part returns each node `$n` of the type `a-node`. For each such node, filter 1 retrieves its lowercase word form from the attribute `m/form` and drops those forms that do not start with a letter. Filter 2 groups the rows with the same form and counts the number of rows in each group, producing a table with two columns: a form and number of its occurrences; due to the grouping, the first column now contains only unique values. The `filter` clause of Filter 2 prunes this table, preserving only rows where the number of occurrences is at least 1000. Finally, filter 3 copies both input columns and orders the table by its second column, in the decreasing order, so that the most frequent forms appear on top.
columnExp
  columnExp : ((literal | inputValueRef | FUNCTION '(' (columnExp + ',' ) ')' | GROUPFUNCTION '(' (columnExp + ',' ) ('over' (columnExp + ',' ) ('sort by' (columnRef + ',' ))?)? ')' | '(' columnExp ')') + ('+' | '-' | '*' | 'div' | 'mod' | AMP)) ; inputValueRef: attributePath | columnRef ; columnRef: DOLLAR NUMBER;

  Column expressions are expressions that additionally allow group functions and column references of the form `$N` where `N`. Note that in the first output filter following the selective part of the query, attribute paths must be used to refer to the input of the filter, where as everywhere else column references must be used.

  The exact rules on usage of group functions and column references in column expressions are detailed in the description of output filters above.

### Semantics of attribute paths

Nodes in PML are usually attribute-value structures with values that can be of either atomic PML data types (integers, strings, etc.) or complex PML data types (structures, lists, alternatives, sequences, containers). This means that to get to an atomic value stored within a node we sometimes have to travel through several nested complex data structures, starting from the top-level structure which is the node itself. PML-TQ uses attribute paths to describe the route of such a travel.

The syntax of an attribute path is described by the attributePath production of the PML-TQ grammar.

In this section we define how attribute paths are evaluated. (Note: complex queries over nested attribute values can be performed by combining attribute paths with the `member` selector, see .)

An attribute path consists of a sequence of steps separated by slashes. This sequence can be optionally preceded by a primitive quantifier the semantics of which is described later in . Each step is either a name, the string '`content()`', an index, or an element index.

Let P be an attribute path consisting of steps S1,…,Sm (m>0). The result of evaluation of P on a node N is a set VN,P of atomic values (integers, floats, or character strings). The evaluation proceeds by evaluating the steps from 1 to m; the evaluation of the step Sn (1≤n≤m) takes as input a set of values Vn and results in a set of values Vn+1. For each n (1≤n≤m+1), all values in Vn are of equal data type (which, if P is a valid attribute path for N, is complex for n≤m and atomic for n=m+1).

The evaluation is initialized with a set V1={N} whose only element is the node N, which is either a structure or a container. The result of the evaluation if the set VN,p=Vm+1.

Let Vn be given. We now describe the evaluation based on the syntactic type of the n-th step Sn and the data type of values in Vn. Let tn denote the type of the values in Vn.

- If tn is an atomic type (and there is an n-th step), the query compiler reports an error and fails.

- If tn is a structure or container type and Sn is a name of a valid member for tn (according to the declaration of tn in the corresponding PML schema) then for every element of Vn, Vn+1 contains the value of its member Sn, provided the value is non-null; i.e.

  V_{n+1}=\{v.{S_n}\,;\,v\in V_n\,\&\,\neg\hbox{\sf is-null}(v.{S_n})\}
  If the step Sn is '`content()`' and tn is a container type with non-void content (i.e. the container has some content type declared in the PML schema), Vn+1 consists of the content value of each element of Vn, i.e.
  V_{n+1}=\{c\,;\,c=\hbox{\sf content-of}(v)\,\&\,v\in V_n\,\&\,\neg\hbox{\sf is-null}(c)\}
  If Sn is anything else, the query compiler reports and error and fails.

- If tn is an ordered list and Sn is an index of the form `[k]`, where k is a non-negative integer number, then Vn+1 consists of the (k+1)-th value (v[k]) of each list in Vn whose length is at least k+1, i.e.

  V_{n+1}=\{v[k]\,;\,v\in V_n\,\&\,\hbox{\sf length}(v)>k\,\&\,v[k\neg\hbox{\sf is-null}(])\}

- If tn is a list or an alternative, and Sn is any step except for the case covered above (where tn was an ordered list and Sn an index), let V'n consist of all non-null values that occur in some list or alternative from Vn, i.e.

  V'_{n}=\{w\,;\,(\exists v\in V_n)(\exists k<\hbox{\sf length}(v))(w=v[k]\,\&\,\neg\hbox{\sf is-null}(w))\}
  Then Vn+1 is obtained by applying the step Sn on the set V'n instead according to these rules.

- If tn is a sequence type and Sn is an element name E valid for the sequence type tn, then Vn+1 consists of all non-null values of elements with a given name occurring in some sequence from Vn, i.e.

  V_{n+1}=\{w\,;\,(\exists v\in V_n)(\exists k<\hbox{\sf length}(v))(\hbox{\sf name-of}(v[k])=E\,\&\,w=\hbox{\sf value-of}(v[k])\,\&\,\neg\hbox{\sf is-null}(w))\}

  If Sn is of the form '`E[k]`', where E is a valid element name for tn and k is a non-negative integer number, then for each sequence in Vn the (k+1)-st occurrence of element named E (if exists) is taken and the element's value, if non-null, is added to Vn+1. Formally,

  \begin{equation*} \begin{split} V_{n+1}=\{w\,;\,(\exists v\in V_n)(\exists k<\hbox{\sf length}(v))( &\#\{l<k \,;\, \hbox{\sf name-of}(v[l])=E \}=k\\ &\,\&\,\hbox{\sf name-of}(v[k])=E\\ &\,\&\,\hbox{\sf value-of}(v[k])=w \,\&\,\neg\hbox{\sf is-null}(w))\} \end{split} \end{equation*}

  If Sn is of the form '`[k]E`', where E is a valid element name for tn and k is a non-negative integer number, then for each sequence in Vn of length at least k+1 the (k+1)-st element is taken and if its name is E and its value is non-null, the value is added to Vn+1. Formally,

  \begin{equation*} \begin{split} V_{n+1}=\{w\,;\,(\exists v\in V_n)(&\hbox{\sf length}(v)>k\,\&\, \hbox{\sf name-of}(v[k])=E\\ &\,\&\,w=\hbox{\sf value-of}(v[k])\,\&\,\neg\hbox{\sf is-null}(w))\} \end{split} \end{equation*}

### Primitive quantifiers

As described above, evaluation of an attribute path on some node may result in a set of values (usually empty or containing one element, but if lists, alternatives or sequences are on the path, the set can be of arbitrary finite cardinality). In this section we define how the truth value of a predicate involving attribute paths is evaluated. We start with the formal definition and then demonstrate it on a few examples.

Definition

Let R be a predicate and let p1,…,pn be an enumeration of all occurrences of attribute paths in expressions (terms) contained in R in the order of occurrence and let N1,…,Nn be the nodes to which the attribute paths relate. Let for i (1≤i≤n), Qi denote the universal quantifier

\forall
∀
if pi starts with a '*' and
\exists
∃
otherwise. Let Vi denote the set VNi,pi of atomic values obtained by evaluating the attribute paths pi on the node Ni. Then the truth value of the predicate R for this assignment is that of the formula (Q_1 x_1 \in V_1)\ldots(Q_n x_n \in V_n)R' where R' is an atomic formula obtained from R by replacing the attribute paths p1,…,pn by variables x1,…,xn. (Note that each of the variables has exactly one occurrence in R'.)

Now let us demonstrate the definition on some examples. Let R be the predicate

    *a != b/c + *$n.d/e/f

in the query

    z-node $n := [ child z-node $m := [ *a != b/c + *$n.d/e/f ] ]

where `z-node` is some node type, and `a` `b/c`, `d/e/f` are valid attribute paths for nodes of this type. Let N and M be nodes from the searched data assigned to the selectors `$n` and `$m`.

Let's assume that the attribute `a` is a list of numbers and that VN,a is the set of all values of the attribute `a` for the node N. Similarly, let VM,b/c be the set of all values of the attribute path `b/c` evaluated on the node M and VN,d/e/f the set of all values of the attribute path `d/e/f` evaluated on the node N.

The truth value of the predicate R is obtained by evaluating the following formula:

(\forall x \in V_{N,a})(\exists y \in V_{M,b/c})(\forall z \in V_{N,d/e/f}) x\neq y + z | (1)

Thus, the query matches the nodes A, B if and only if B is a child of A and the above formula holds. Note that since the attribute paths `*a` and `*$a.d/e/f` start with the character '`*`' (called a primitive universal quantifier) the corresponding variables x and z in the formula (1) are universally quantified, whereas y, corresponding to `b/c` is quantified existentially. Note also, that the order of the quantifiers in the formula (1) preserves the order of the occurrence of the corresponding attribute paths in R.

If we had instead written

    ! *a = b/c + *$n.d/e/f

moving the negation (`!`) out of the predicate, the resulting formula would be completely different:

\neg(\forall x \in V_{N,a})(\exists y \in V_{M,b/c})(\forall z \in V_{N,d/e/f}) x= y + z | (2)

and equivalent to

(\exists x \in V_{N,a})(\forall y \in V_{M,b/c})(\exists z \in V_{N,d/e/f}) x\neq y + z | (3)

Let us give some more practical examples. Assume nodes of the type `p-node` have an attribute `functions` that is an unordered list or an alternative of string values. Let us consider the following constraints and the translations to formulae (assuming VN is the set of values of the `functions` for a given p-node N):

1. `functions = functions` asserts that the list `functions` on N is non-empty, since the constraint translates to the formula \qquad\qquad (\exists x \in V_N)(\exists y \in V_N)x=y which is equivalent to (\exists x \in V_N)x=x and to V_N\neq\emptyset .

2. `functions != functions` asserts that the list `functions` on N contains (at least) two distinct strings, since it translates to \qquad\qquad (\exists x \in V_N)(\exists y \in V_N)x\neq y .

3. `!functions = functions` means that the list `functions` on N is empty, since it is a negation of `functions=functions` .

4. `*functions = *functions` asserts that the list `functions` on N contains at most one unique value because it translates to \qquad\qquad (\forall x \in V_N)(\forall y \in V_N)x= y , which is satisfied if the set VN is either empty or contains exactly one element.

5. `*functions = functions` is always satisfied, because it translates to \qquad\qquad (\forall x \in V_N)(\exists y \in V_N)x= y .

6. `functions = *functions` asserts that the list `functions` contains exactly one unique value, since it translates to \qquad\qquad (\exists x \in V_N)(\forall y \in V_N)x=y .

7. `*functions != functions` asserts that the list `functions` is either empty or contains at least two unique value, since it translates to \qquad\qquad (\forall x \in V_N)(\exists y \in V_N)x\neq y .

8. `functions != *functions` translates to \qquad\qquad (\exists x \in V_N)(\forall y \in V_N)x\neq y , which is never satisfied (since x=x).

### Member selectors

While primitive quantifiers allow one to quantify over atomic values on a complete attribute path, something it is useful to quantify over elements on some partial attribute paths while specifying conditions on the quantified element. This can be done using the relation `member`, which allows us to access data structures stored in node's attributes almost as if they were regular nodes.

For example: assume each node contains an annotation of the bridging anaphora. This can be represented by an attribute called `bridging` that is a list of structures with two members, `informal-type` (a string value for the type of the anaphora) and `target.rf` (a PML reference to the anaphora referred node). So, each element of the `bridging` list represents a labeled link to another node. We might want to ask for nodes with `functor="ACT"` that are pointed to from the current node by a pointer with a specific `informal-type`, say `"CONTRAST"`.

The following query will not work

    t-node $n := [
      bridging/informal-type = "CONTRAST",
      bridging/target-node.rf t-node [ functor="ACT" ]
    ]

The problem with this query is that `bridging` attribute contains a list and constraints on its values are independent. So, `$n` can still match a node whose `bridging` attribute is a list consisting of two list members, one that points to an ACTor but whose `informal-label` is not `"CONTRAST"`, and one with `informal-label="CONTRAST"` but pointing somewhere else.

In order to be able to say that these list members are the same, we have to use the `member` selector:

    t-node $n:= [
      member bridging [
        informal-type = "CONTRAST",
        target-node.rf t-node [ functor="ACT" ]
      ]
    ]

This query says that one of the values matched by the attribute path `bridging` (i.e. one of the members of the list contained in the attribute `bridging` of the node matched by `$a`) has `informal-type="CONTRAST"` and points to a `t-node` with `functor="ACT"`. Thus, `member` selector works as an existential quantification over values of a list or alt attribute. We can also use `member` selector for sequence attributes, but the attribute path that follows the `member` keyword must specify a particular element name in the last step. For example, if `bridging` was not a list but a sequence of elements named e.g. `terminal`, `non-terminal`, we must use either

    member bridging/terminal [...]

to quantify over all terminals in the `bridging` sequence or

    member bridging/non-terminal [...]

to quantify over all non-terminals in the `bridging` sequence.

Of course, we can use `member` selectors within `member` selectors and (as we have seen), we can use PML-reference relations within `member` selectors. But since the objects represented by the `member` selector are not a regular nodes one cannot use the tree-structure selectors such as `child` or `parent` within `member` selectors.

A `member` selector can be used for a subquery, i.e. prefixed by an occurrence clause or used in boolean expressions. In particular, negated or zero-times occurring `member` selector with negated constraints can be used to formulate universal quantification over values of a list, alt, or sequence.

### Group functions explained

PML-TQ supports group functions in the output filters. These functions compute its value based on a group of input rows, not just the current row. For example, one can use them to compute a sum or maximum over a group of input rows, or a rank of the current input row in some particular ordering of the group of input rows it belongs to.

A filter can specify grouping of input rows in the following ways:

- Considering all input rows as one group.

  In this case case the filter produces exactly one output row whose columns are either constant or computed by applying a group function.

  Examples of such filters are

       >> count()

  computing just the count of all input rows, or

       >> concat($1), sum($2)/count(), max($2)-min($2)

  computing a row consisting of three columns: the first one concatenating all values in column 1 of the input from the preceding filter, the second computing an average value of column 2 of the input (which we could also write as `avg($2)`), the third the difference between maximum and minimum value column 2 of the input.

- Partitioning input rows into groups and evaluating group functions over each group.

  This method allows one to define a partition on the input rows into groups that share some key value and then operate on each of these groups individually, producing one output row per partition group.

  In the first step, the filter computes a vector of values from each input row, called a key, and puts all rows that produce the same key to one group. The filter then produces for each group one output row, computed based on the columns of the group key and group functions ranging over the group.

  For example, consider the following query:

      t-root $r:= [
        descendant t-node $n []
      ]
      >> $r.id, depth($n)
      >> for $1 give max($2)
      >> for $1 give $1, count() sort by $2 desc

  The main part of the query returns all pairs of nodes `($r,$n)` where $r is a root node and $n is any of its descendants. For all such occurrences, the first filter produces a row with two columns: the (unique) ID of `$r` and the depth of the node `$n` in the tree.

  The second filter takes the first column of its input row (i.e. the `ID`) as the key and groups the input row by this key; this results in as many groups as there were unique root nodes in the matching set and each group consists of the input rows that belong to one root. This is done by the `for $1` clause. The `give max($2)` clause says that for each group, we want to produce an output row with a single column whose value is calculated as the maximum of the values in column 2 of the input filter, i.e. maximum of depths of the nodes `$n` for the given root `$r`. This is basically the depth of the tree rooted in `$r`.

  Finally, the third filter computes a distribution of tree depths. It's input are depths of individual trees. It groups the input rows according to their first and only column (the depth). Since there is just one input column, the key vector here is the whole input row; so all rows within each group are identical. For each group, the filter counts number of rows in it and outputs a row whose first column is the first column of the group key (in our case the tree depth) and the second is the count (number of trees of the particular depth). Finally, the `sort by $2 desc` clause orders the output table by the 2nd column in the descending order.

  Note that there are two types of column references in the `give...` clause. Those that occur within a grouping function (such as `$2` in `max($2)`) refer to columns of the rows in the current group. Those that occur outside a group function, (such as `$1` in `$1,count()`) refer to columns of the key vector of the current group (so it is guaranteed that this value is constant over all rows in each group).

- On-line grouping within group functions.

  PML-TQ also allows group functions to be computed over some group of input rows without actually partitioning the input, i.e. without reducing the number of output rows to one per group. Using this method, each group function can specify its own way of grouping and ordering of the input rows. Consider this example on PDT 2.0:

      t-node $a := [
        t_lemma = '#Forn',
        t-node $b := [
         functor = "FPHR"
        ]
      ];
      >> $a.id, distinct concat($b.t_lemma, ' ' over $a sort by $b.deepord )

  The selective part of the query finds t-node `$a` with `t_lemma='#Forn'` which is a technical node governing a flat list of words in a foreign language and its child-node `$b` with functor `FPHR` (foreign phrase), which matches any of the words.

  To reconstruct the foreign phrase, we need for each `$a` to concatenate the `t_lemma` of all corresponding `$b`'s in the ordering of the tree (given by the attribute `deepord`).

  The input to our filter are the pairs of nodes `$a` and `$b`. The concatenation is performed by the group function `concat`. The first argument says which value we want to extract from each input, the second argument `' '` is optional and specifies a separator of the concatenated values. The `over ...` clause defines partitioning into groups just as the `for ...` clause; the difference is that this partitioning is particular to this group function, not to the whole filter. In fact, given an input row, the expression `concat($b.t_lemma, ' ' over $a ...` says that we want to select those input rows where `$a` is the same as in the current row, and for this selection concatenate the values `$b.t_lemma`. The `sort by...` clause says that the selected rows should be ordered by `$b.deepord`.

  Unlike partitioning using the `for...` clause, this type of partitioning is done within the group function, so the filter produces one output row for each input row, not just one per group. Thus, we would get the same output for each input pair `($a,$b)` where `$a` is the same; we therefore use the keyword `distinct` to filter out the duplicities from the output.

  Thus, on the output, we get the ID of `$a` and the foreign phrase its subtree represents.

  This type of grouping can also be combined with the `for...` clause to define a partitioning on the set of groups produced by the `for...` clause. In that case, the column references within a `over...` clause refer to the columns of the group key of the `for...` clause.

  The clause `over all` can be used as a special variant of the `over...` clause creating only one group which spans over all input rows. The same effect can also be achieved using a constant key in the `over...` clause, e.g. `over 0`.

Let us consider an example that combines grouping based on '`for`' and '`over`'.

Let's say that for each functor A we want to know the probability that a child of a node with functor=A has functor A, B, C, D, etc. In other words, we want to compute the joint distribution of functor labels over nodes connected by an edge. This is done by the following query:

    t-node $p := [  t-node $c := [  ] ];
    >>  for $p.functor,$c.functor
        give $1,$2,count() div sum(count() over $1)
        sort by $1,$3 desc,$2
    >> $1,$2,percnt($3,2) & '%'

The selective part select a pair of t-nodes `($p,$c)` where `$p` governs `$c`.

We first group together pairs with the same pair of functors using `for $p.functor,$c.functor`. This partitions original input rows into groups `g1,...,gn`, each determined by the unique value of the grouping key `($p.functor,$c.functor)`. For each group we give to the next filter this pair of functors and the probability of the second functor on the first one. The filter thus produces one output row for each group. Let us see how the output row is produced for a group `gi` whose key is for example `('PRED','ACT')`.

The first two columns are just taken from the key vector, using `$1,$2` and producing 'PRED','ACT'. The probability that 'ACT' is governed by 'PRED' is computed using the following expression:

    count() div sum(count() over $1)

The first `count()` just computes the number of rows in the current group `gi`, i.e. the number of occurrences of 'PRED','ACT' among the selected pairs of nodes.

The `over $1` clause in the expression `sum(... over $1)`. partitions the set `g1,...,gn` into groups of higher level, putting together those groups, that share the 1st column of the group key.

So, our current group `gi` for ('PRED','ACT') representing will end up in one sack with all groups whose key starts with 'PRED', e.g. ('PRED','PAT'), ('PRED','EFF'), etc. For our group `gi`, the sum will compute its value over this sack, by summing the number of elements in each group that ended in this sack. Thus the result is in fact the number of all occurrences of 'PRED' dominating any other functor.

The filter then orders the results primarily by the functor of the parent node, secondarily by the probability in decreasing order, and tertiary by the functor of the child. The second filter merely applies the expression `percnt($3,2) & '%'` to the 3rd column, dividing it by 100, rounding the result to two decimal points and appends a percent sign.

The output looks like this (without the ellipses):

    ACMP    RSTR    54.37%
    ACMP    PAT     10.77%
    ACMP    ACT     10.34%
    ACMP    APP     4.99%
    ...
    ACT     RSTR    49.56%
    ACT     PAT     9.75%
    ACT     APP     8.68%
    ...
    ADDR    RSTR    64.67%
    ADDR    APP     14.74%
    ADDR    PAT     4.24%
    ADDR    ID      3.17%
    ...
    ADVS    PRED    48.5%
    ADVS    ACT     13.18%
    ADVS    CM      9.09%
    ...

The query just explained can also be rewritten as follows:

    t-node $p := [ t-node $c := [  ] ];
    >> $p.functor,$c.functor
    >> distinct $1,$2, count(over $1,$2) div count(over $1)
       sort by $1,$3 desc, $2
    >> $1, $2, percnt($3,2) & '%'

Another reformulation of the query uses the group function `ratio()`:

    t-node $p := [ echild t-node $c :=  [  ] ];
    >>  for $p.functor,$c.functor
      give $1,$2,ratio(count() over $1)
      sort by $1,$3 desc
    >> $1, $2, percnt($3,2) desc

Finally, we may insert filters selecting just a few (say two) best ranking rows for each functor in the first column:

    t-node $p := [ echild t-node $c :=  [  ] ];
    >>  for $p.functor,$c.functor
      give $1,$2,ratio(count() over $1)
      sort by $1,$3 desc
    >> $1,$2,$3, row_number(over $1)
    >> filter $4<=2
    >> $1, $2, percnt($3,2) desc

to produce the following output (continuing after the final ellipsis):

    ACMP    RSTR    54.37%
    ACMP    PAT     10.77%
    ACT     RSTR    49.56%
    ACT     PAT     9.75%
    ADDR    RSTR    64.67%
    ADDR    APP     14.74%
    ADVS    PRED    48.5%
    ADVS    ACT     13.18%
    ...

### Functions

#### Functions related to the tree structure

name($var?)

  Return the name of a node matched by the given selector (assume current selector if used without an argument). This function only makes sense if the node is an element of a PML sequence (of trees or child nodes).

depth($var?)

  Returns the depth in the tree (counting from 0) of a node matched by a given selector. If no argument is given, the current selector is assumed.

descendants($var?)

  Returns the number of descendants of the node matched by a given selector. If no argument is given, the current selector is assumed.

lbrothers($var?)

  Returns the number of left siblings of the node matched by a given selector. If no argument is given, the current selector is assumed.

rbrothers($var?)

  Returns the number of right siblings of the node matched by a given selector. If no argument is given, the current selector is assumed.

sons($var?)

  Returns the number of child nodes of the node matched by a given selector. If no argument is given, the current selector is assumed.

depth_first_order($var?)

  Returns the depth-first order of the node matched by the given selector (counting from 0). If no argument is given, the current selector is assumed.

#### Functions related to corpus

file($var?)

  Returns the file name of a document in which the node matched by a given (or current) selector occurs.

tree_no($var?)

  Returns index of a tree in which a the node matched by a given (or current) selector occurs, i.e. the position of the tree in its document.

address($var?)

  Returns an URL uniquely determining the node matched by a given (or current) selector. The same value can be also computed using the following expression: `file($var) & '##' & tree_no($var) & '.' & depth_first_order($var)`.

#### String functions

length(string)

  Returns the string length of a given expression.

substr(string,offset,length?)

  Returns a substring of a given string starting at at a given offset (first character in the string has offset 0) and spanning for a given length or to the end of the string, if length is omitted or if the original string has less than offset+length characters.

match(string,regexp,flags?)

  Returns the first substring of a given string matching a given regular expression. The optional third argument can be a string of flags modifying the behavior of the regular expression matching procedure. The following flags are supported:

  i

    case insensitive match

  c

    case sensitive match (default)

  n

    allows the period (.) to match the newline character

  m

    Treat string as multiple lines. That is, change "^" and "$" from matching the start or end of the string to matching the start or end of any line anywhere within the string.

replace(string,substr,replacement)

  Substitutes a given replacement for all (non-overlapping) occurrences of a given substring in a given string and returns the result. For example, `replace('banana ananas','ana','ANA')` returns `bANAna ANAnas`.

substitute(string,regexp,replacement,flags?)

  Substitutes a given replacement for the first or all (non-overlapping) substrings matching a given regular expression in a given string and returns the result.

  The default behavior is to replace just the first matching substring. To replace all occurrences, use the flag 'g'.

  The replacement string may contain references to subexpressions of the matching regular expression (subexpressions are parts of the expressions enclosed in brackets). The string \N, where N is a digit from 1 to 9, is a reference to the N-th subexpression (counting opening brackets from the left), and is substituted in the result by the substring matched by that subexpression. For example, if the regular expression was `a(b(c))(d)`, then `\1`, `\2`, and `\3` refer to the subexpressions `(b(c))`, `(c)`, and `(d)`, respectively.

  Note: in PML-TQ string literals, backslash (`\`) is used as an escaping character, therfore, if the replacement string is a written as a string literal, one must use e.g. `\\2` instead of `\2`. Moreover, because of this special use of backslash in the replacement string, literal backslash has to be written as `\\`, which, in a PML-TQ string literal, becomes `\\\\`.

  The optional third argument is a string of flags modifying the behavior of the regular expression matching procedure. Any of the flags described above for the function `match()` can be used here, and additionally `substitute()` supports the following flag:

  g

    global replace: replace all non-overlapping matches of a given regular expression

  For example, `substitute('banana ananas','([^n])a','\\1@','g')` returns the string `b@nana @nanas`.

lower(string)

  Returns lowercase version of a given expression.

upper(string)

  Returns uppercase version of a given expression.

tr(string,characters_to_replace,replacement)

  Replaces all occurrences of given characters in a string with corresponding characters in the replacement set, that is, replaces all occurrences of the Nth character from characters_to_replace with the Nth character in the replacement. For example, `tr('122-34','24','ab')` returns the string `1aa-b4`.

#### Numerical functions

ceil(number)

  Return the smallest integer value greater than or equal to a given numerical argument.

floor(number)

  Return the largest integer value less than or equal to the numerical argument.

round(number,places?)

  Returns a given number rounded to a specified number of decimal places (0 if the second argument is not specified).

trunc(number,places?)

  Returns a number truncated to a certain number of decimal places (0 if second argument is not specified).

exp(number)

  Returns e powered to a given number.

ln(number)

  Returns natural logarithm of a given number.

power(base?,number)

  Returns base powered to a given number. If base is not specified, the base of 10 is used.

log(base?,number)

  Returns logarithm of a given number using a given base (or 10 if base is not specified).

sqrt(number)

  Returns the square root of a given number.

abs(number)

  Returns the absolute value of a given number.

#### Group Functions

A group function is a function that computes its value based on a group of input rows, not just the current row. Group functions can only be used in the `give...` clause of an output filter and cannot be used in the selective part of the query. There are several ways of using these functions:

1. `GROUPFUNCTION(arguments...)`. If this form is used in the `give` part of a `for ... give ...` clause, the function computes its value by considering only those input rows that belong to the current group. If used outside a `for ... give ...` clause, the function computes its value by considering all input rows (i.e. the rows returned by the preceding filter or the selective part of the query).

2. `GROUPFUNCTION(arguments... over columnExp, ...)`. This form creates a temporary partitioning of the current input according to given column specifications following the `over` keyword and computes its value by considering input rows of the group to which the current input row belongs. Unlike with `for ... give ...`, this partitioning is only used to compute the value of the group function and does not propagate to the output, so the filter still returns one output row for each input row, rather than a row for each group.

3. `GROUPFUNCTION(arguments... over all)` computes its value by considering all input rows (if used in the `give ...` clause of a `for ... give ...` filter, this means not just rows in the current group).

4. `GROUPFUNCTION(arguments... over columnExp,... sort by columnRef,... )` is a variant of the previous grouping that forces an ordering on the rows within a group; this is useful for the group function `concat()` and the ranking functions `row_number()`, `rank()`, and `dense_rank()`.

count([ over ... ])

  Returns the number of input rows considered.

sum(expression [ over ... ])

  For each row considered, computes the expression and returns a sum of the results. The expression must evaluate to a number.

concat(expression, ["separator"] [ over ... [sort by ...]])

  For each row considered, computes the expression and returns a character string obtained by concatenating the results; the optional second argument may be a literal string to be used as a separator of the concatenated strings. The values are concatenated in no particular order unless the `over ... sort by ...` clause is used.

min(expression [ over ... ])

  For each row considered, computes the expression and returns the minimum of the resulting values. The expression must evaluate to a number.

max(expression [ over ... ])

  For each row considered, computes the expression and returns the maximum of the resulting values. The expression must evaluate to a number.

avg(expression [ over ... ])

  For each row considered, computes the expression and returns the average of the resulting values. The expression must evaluate to a number.

ratio(expression [ over ... ])

  Returns the ratio of the value computed using the expression to the sum of all values computed using this expression over all rows considered.

row_number([over ...] [sort by ...])

  For each row considered, returns its number within its group counting from 1. The partitioning can be specified by the `over ...` clause and the rows in each group can be ordered by the `sort by ...` clause.

rank([over ...] [sort by ...])

  For each row considered, returns its relative rank with gaps counting from 1 with respect to the other rows in the same group; the rank is based on ordering the group according to the expressions in the `sort by ...` clause. Ties, i.e. rows with equal values of the expressions in the `sort by ...` clause, receive the same rank, however, if two rows do receive the same rank the rank numbers will subsequently skip: if two rows are of rank 1, the next rank will be 3 (there will be no rank 2). Thus, the returned value for a row is the same as `row_number()` of the first row in the group with the same sort key. For example, the values in an (already sorted) group `1,1,1,3,7,7,20` have the following ranks: `1,1,1,4,5,5,7`. See also `dense_rank()`.

dense_rank([over ...] [sort by ...])

  For each row considered, returns its relative rank without gaps counting from 1 with respect to the other rows in the same group; the rank is based on ordering the group according to the expressions in the `sort by ...` clause. Ties, i.e. rows with equal values of the expressions in the `sort by ...` clause, receive the same rank. A dense rank returns a ranking number without any gaps. For example, the values in an (already sorted) group (1,1,1,3,7,7,20) have the following `1,1,1,3,7,7,20` have the following ranks: `1,1,1,2,3,3,4`. See also `rank()`.

### Examples

## Installing PML-TQ server

To run PML-TQ Servers, first you will need to install an SQL database server. Oracle 10g or 11g and PostgreSQL ver. min. 8.4.1 are fully supported .

### Quick start

Instalation in a few quick steps:

- Install PostgreSQL >= 8.4 or Oracle >= 10g database (e.g. the free XE version)

- Create a new directory for data conversion by copying the contrib/prepare_data/sample/ directory

      mkdir my_treebank_pmltq
      cd  my_treebank_pmltq
      cp -R contrib/prepare_data/sample/* .

- Convert your treebank into the PML format (depends on the native format of your data)

- Create a soft-link to your treebank data in my_treebank_pmltq (just for convenience)

      ln -s /path/to/your/treebank/data/in/pml data

- Edit carefully the following configuration scripts in my_treebank_pmltq directory according to the comments provided there:

      $EDITOR bin/config.sh
      $EDITOR bin/convert_to_db.sh

- Run the following script on any machine

      bin/convert_to_db.sh

- Run the following scripts on the machine running the SQL server or a machine able to access the SQL server via the database command-line client (sqlplus or psql)

      bin/create_db.sh
      bin/load_to_db.sh

- Change to the pmltq installation directory:

      cd /path/to/pmltq

- Create/edit the configuration file config/pmltq_cgi.conf :

      [ -f config/pmltq_cgi.conf ] || mv config/pmltq_cgi.conf.sample config/pmltq_cgi.conf
      $EDITOR config/pmltq_cgi.conf

- Create/edit the configuration file run/run.conf :

      [ -f run/run.conf ] || mv run/run.conf.sample run/run.conf
      $EDITOR run/run.conf

- Start PMLTQ servers

      run/run.sh --start

- Use them!

      ./pmltq

  or

  - open http://localhost:8082/query in your browser.

  - start TrEd, press Shift F3 , configure connection, create a query and press Space.

### Preparing data

First of all make sure your treebanks are in PML. Otherwise you need to convert your data to PML first. (TODO: list few converters)

#### Converting PML data into SQL

Start by following steps:

- Create a new directory for the data conversion by copying the `contrib/prepare_data/sample/` directory.

      mkdir my_treebank_pmltq
      cd  my_treebank_pmltq
      cp -R contrib/prepare_data/sample/*

- Create a soft-link to your treebank data in my_treebank_pmltq (just for convenience and easy access)

      ln -s /path/to/your/treebank/data/in/pml data

  Your directory now contains a `bin` directory with a set of esential scripts.

  config.sh

    This configuration file controls the data conversion from PML to SQL/dumps and loading of the data to the SQL database.

    You will need to configure at least basic treebank infomation and the database access. See the comments inside the file.

  convert_to_db.sh

    Converts PML data to sql dumps. If you need something that paralelizes jobs; this is the place.

  create_db.sh

    Creates databases according to your configuration.

  load_to_db.sh

    Loads sql dumps to the database. You need to convert the data and setup your configuration prior running this script.

  sql_shell.sh

    Starts sql command line client (sqlplus or psql) according to your database configuration.

  generate_pmltq_cgi_conf.sh

    Generates a fragment of `pmltq_cgi.conf` for the current treebank.

- Edit carefully the following configuration scripts in my_treebank_pmltq directory according to the comments provided there:

      $EDITOR bin/config.sh
      $EDITOR bin/convert_to_db.sh

- Run the following script on any machine:

      bin/convert_to_db.sh

#### Importing SQL data

The following scripts are supposed to be run on the machine running the SQL server or a machine able to access the SQL server via the database command-line client (sqlplus or psql).

- Run `create_db.sh` in case you need to create a fresh new database. Be careful, as this script also deletes any existing data in the database.

      bin/create_db.sh

- Run following script to load sql dumps into the database. Any existing data in the database will be deleted.

      bin/load_to_db.sh

### Setting up configuration files

There are two main configuration files you will need to setup. Both of them are in PML-TQ installation directory.

#### pmltq_cgi.conf

This XML file holds list of treebanks including database connection settings. This is also the place where you can set all limits for your PML-TQ server and very important url to print service. For additional information consult xml schema in `resources/pmltq_cgi_conf_schema.xml`.

Example config:

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
    <pmltq_cgi_config xmlns="http://ufal.mff.cuni.cz/pdt/pml/">
     <head>
      <schema href="pmltq_cgi_conf_schema.xml" />
     </head>
     <limit>500</limit>
     <row_limit>10000</row_limit>
     <timeout>30</timeout>
     <tree_print_service>http://localhost:8070/svg</tree_print_service>
     <configurations>
      <dbi id="pdt20_mwe" public="0" featured="99">
        <description>
          <moreinfo>http://ufal.mff.cuni.cz/lexemann/mwe</moreinfo>
          <title>Prague Dependency Treebank 2.0 with Multi-Word Expressions</title>
          <abstract>This dataset adds annotation of multiword expressions and multiword named entities to the original PDT 2.0 data.</abstract>
        </description>
       <driver>Pg</driver>
       <host>localhost</host>
       <port>5432</port>
       <database>pdt20_mwe</database>
       <username>pmltq</username>
       <password>your_password</password>
       <sources>
        <AM schema="valency_lexicon">/work/vallex</AM>
        <AM schema="adata">/work/data</AM>
        <AM schema="tdata">/work/data</AM>
       </sources>
      </dbi>
     </configurations>
    </pmltq_cgi_config>

<limit>

  maximum number of results to return for node queries

<row_limit>

  maximum number of results for filter queries

<timeout>

  timeout before the search engine give up (in seconds)

<tree_print_service>

  exact URL of print service

<configurations>

  list of treebanks

  List items can be generated by running `generate_pmltq_cgi_conf.sh` script in treebank directory. See section .

  <dbi>

    list item holder

    Attributes:

    id

      treebank id; this is usually also a database name

    public

      visible or hidden in public treebank list

    featured

      popularity index

  <description>

    detailed information about the treebank

  <driver>

    `Pg` for Postgres, `Oracle` for Oracle database engine

  <host>, <port>, <username>, <password>

    database connection information

  <database>

    database name

  <sources>

    data sources for each layer

We strongly recommend using `generate_pmltq_cgi_conf.sh` to generate treebank configration.

#### run.conf

Configuration file for `run/run.sh` a script to start PML-TQ HTTP servers. Follow comments in the file.

Example config:

    #
    # Configuration file for run.sh
    #

    auth_file="${pmltq_dir}/config/.authorization"
    config_file="${pmltq_dir}/config/pmltq_cgi.conf"

    btred_config_file="/path/to/btred.rc"
    tred_dir=/path/to/tred

    # list of print service extensions
    extensions=pdt20,pdt_vallex,ptb,arabic_treebank,hydt

    # if you want graphics in the WWW interface, setup to your tred installation here
    # You'll also need Xvfb installed and the xvfb-run script
    print_service="xvfb-run $tred_dir/bin/start_btred -c $btred_config_file -Z $tred_dir/resources -m $tred_dir/examples/print_srvr_simple.btred --enable-extensions $extensions"

    on_print_service_stop="grep_kill '[X]vfb :99'"

    # Treebank ports and number of http servers to fork.
    # Format:
    #
    # CONFIG_ID=PORT,NUMBER_OF_INSTANCES
    #
    # e.g
    #      foo=1234,2
    #      bar=1235,7
    #
    # where CONFIG_ID refers to the id of <dbi> elements in $config_file
    #

    # List of CONFIG_ID's of services to start by default

    pdt20_mwe=8082,1

    all=(# <-- names of treebanks to be run by default
    pdt20_mwe
    )

### Setting up print service

If you want graphics in the WWW interface, Tred and Xvfb installation will be needed. For Tred installation follow this link to Tred Manual. Installation of Xvfb depends on your Linux distribution; use your packaging system or see www.x.org.

Some Xvfb installations are without `xvfb-run` script. You can easily get `xvfb-run` script from other distributions as they are usually the same.

## Tools