Function doQueryWord(aWord As String, aRole as String) As String
  ' Construct a command in the simple protocol wordnet-ipc expects
  Dim cmd as String
  cmd = "word" & ";" & aWord & ";" & aRole

  ' Send the command to the waiting perl script
  perlIn.writeLine cmd

  ' Read the output from the perl script.  This will block until output appears.
  Dim results As String
  results = perlOut.readLine

  ' Return results.  You could split on commas - not sure what format you need.
  doQueryWord = results
End Function

' doQuerySense would be nearly identical