EasyNLPnlp-011

Simple Plural Normalization

Problem

Normalize a plural English word to a naive singular form. Rules are checked in order: words ending in 'ies' with length > 3 become 'y'; words ending in 'ches' or 'shes' with length > 4 drop the 'es'; words ending in 'es' whose third-from-last character is 's', 'x', or 'z' drop the 'es'; words ending in 's' but not 'ss' with length > 1 drop the 's'.

Otherwise return the word unchanged.

Hint

word[-3] reads the third character from the end.

Test cases

case 1

in: ["stories"]

expected: "story"

case 2

in: ["boxes"]

expected: "box"

case 3

in: ["churches"]

expected: "church"

case 4

in: ["cats"]

expected: "cat"

case 5

in: ["glass"]

expected: "glass"

Starter codePython

def normalize_plural(word):
    # Your code here
    pass

5 test cases · run your code against them in the editor