[Attempto] Tutorial on Creating User-Specified Lexicons

[Chris Spencer]

Hi,

I'm new to APE. I played around with it, and although it seems to
include a impressive built-in lexicon, I quickly ran into simple
sentences that couldn't be parsed. For example, running:

./ape.exe -text "Every car has wheels." -cparaphrase

gives me the error:

    <message
	importance="error"
	type="word"
	sentence="1"
	token=""
	value="wheels"
	repair="Use the prefix n:, v:, a: or p:."/>

Am I correct in interpreting this error to mean that the word "wheels"
is not contained in the built-in lexicon? If I wanted APE to
understand this sentence, what would I include in a custom lexicon?

Instead, I tried defining "wheels" by running:

./ape.exe -text "Every car has wheels." -cparaphrase -ulextext
"noun_pl(wheels, wheel, neutr)."

but that only gives me the more general error:

  <message
      importance="error"
      type="sentence"
      sentence="1"
      token="4"
      value="Every car has &lt;&gt; wheels."
      repair="This is the first sentence that was not ACE. The sign
&lt;&gt; indicates the position where parsing failed."/>

Is there a guide or tutorial on defining a custom lexicon? I found
http://attempto.ifi.uzh.ch/site/docs/ace_lexicon.html, but I'm still
confused on what exactly I need to do to define my own words.

Also, which verb tenses are currently supported by APE? In my tests,
it seems like APE cannot understand any past-tense verbs. Are there
any plans to support different tenses?

Regards,
Chris