[I7] figuring out how the player referred to something

Is there a way, after a command has been parsed, to figure out the string of words that the player used to refer to the noun (and/or the second noun)? For example, there’s an object called a “folding card table”, and after the player successfully examines the table, I want to know if the player typed “folding table”, “card table”, “folding card table”, or just “table”.

I know you can figure out the exact verb that a player typed by dipping into I6 and printing verb_word; I’m wondering if there’s a similar variable for the noun and second noun.

Not out of the box, but you could try Subcommands by Daniel Stelzer.

…and once again I have recommended an extension that involves a wholesale replacement of part of the parser, which is probably not going to be compatible with Unified Glulx Input. But the modifications to the parser made in Subcommands seem pretty small–search through the code for “=== NEW ===”–so it might be possible to figure out where to pop them in in UGI. I think you’d only need to add that one global definition and then modify the NounDomain replacement.

I’ve been meaning to update my extensions for UGI, so I’ll see what I can do about that. Which version of Inform is this for?

Don’t know if any of this will help, but look over the examples in Recipe Book 2:3 to see if any of that might apply.
inform7.com/learn/man/RB_2_3.html