GrammaticalForm.java

/*
 * The MIT License (MIT)
 *
 * Copyright (c) 2015 Jakob Hendeß
 *
 * Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
 * of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
 * in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
 * to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
 * copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
 * furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
 *
 * The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
 * all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
 *
 * THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
 * IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
 * FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
 * AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
 * LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
 * OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN
 * THE SOFTWARE.
 */

package org.xlrnet.metadict.api.language;

import org.jetbrains.annotations.NotNull;

import java.io.Serializable;

/**
 * The interface {@link GrammaticalForm} can be used to identify different forms of a certain word. It can e.g. be used
 * to identify plural forms of nouns, different time forms for a verb or gender dependent forms {@link
 * GrammaticalGender}.
 */
public interface GrammaticalForm extends Serializable {

    /**
     * Return the identifier for this grammatical form. The identifier should be as unique as possible and written in
     * lowercase letters. When implementing this interface inside an {@link Enum}, this method should return the enum
     * value in lowercase (i.e. {@link Enum#name()} must be lowercased).
     *
     * @return the identifier for this grammatical form.
     */
    @NotNull
    String getFormIdentifier();

}