Section XIII – Generating a sentence with multiple clauses

Phrases joined by a conjunction

One way of generating a sentence with multiple clauses is to use the SimpleNLG class CoordinatedPhraseElement.

    SPhraseSpec s1 = nlgFactory.createClause("my cat", "like", "fish");
    SPhraseSpec s2 = nlgFactory.createClause("my dog", "like", "big bones");
    SPhraseSpec s3 = nlgFactory.createClause("my horse", "like", "grass");

    CoordinatedPhraseElement c = nlgFactory.createCoordinatedPhrase();
    c.addCoordinate(s1);
    c.addCoordinate(s2);
    c.addCoordinate(s3);

The CoordinatedPhraseElement c object can then be realised as a sentence:

    String output = realiser.realiseSentence(c);
    System.out.println(output);

If you do not supply a conjunction using the method setConjunction, the conjunction ‘and’ will automatically be used because it is the default. In this case, the resulting sentence would be:

    My cat likes fish, my dog likes big bones and my horse likes grass.

Subordinate clauses

Subordinate clauses can be added to the main clause using the addComplement method, where the kind of complementiser (“because”, “while”, etc.) to be used is set using the setFeature method.

    SPhraseSpec p = nlgFactory.createClause("I", "be", "happy");
    SPhraseSpec q = nlgFactory.createClause("I", "eat", "fish");
    
    q.setFeature(Feature.COMPLEMENTISER, "because");
    q.setFeature(Feature.TENSE, Tense.PAST);
    p.addComplement(q);
            
    String output4 = realiser.realiseSentence(p);  //Realiser created earlier
    System.out.println(output4);

The output is:

    I am happy because I ate fish.