如何用NLTK标记文章？

Question

I'm trying to understand how to tag an article via the NLTK. According to bullet point 2.7 explains how to find the most frequent nouns.

def findtags(tag_prefix, tagged_text):
    cfd = nltk.ConditionalFreqDist((tag, word) for (word, tag) in tagged_text
                                  if tag.startswith(tag_prefix))
    return dict((tag, cfd[tag].most_common(5)) for tag in cfd.conditions())


>>> tagdict = findtags('NN', nltk.corpus.brown.tagged_words(categories='news'))
>>> for tag in sorted(tagdict):
...     print(tag, tagdict[tag])

But this is really confusing as I don't see how a piece of text is being injected in to find the tags for it. Rather it is using a predefined structure of data (nltk.corpus.brown.tagged_words). Not sure how to proceed here.

Answer 1

In short :

To tag a text, use nltk.pos_tag but do note its quirks ( Python NLTK pos_tag not returning the correct part-of-speech tag ):

>>> from nltk import sent_tokenize, word_tokenize, pos_tag
>>> text = "This is a foo bar piece of text. And there are many sentences in this text."
>>> tagged_text = [pos_tag(word_tokenize(sent)) for sent in sent_tokenize(text)]
>>> tagged_text
[[('This', 'DT'), ('is', 'VBZ'), ('a', 'DT'), ('foo', 'NN'), ('bar', 'NN'), ('piece', 'NN'), ('of', 'IN'), ('text', 'NN'), ('.', '.')], [('And', 'CC'), ('there', 'EX'), ('are', 'VBP'), ('many', 'JJ'), ('sentences', 'NNS'), ('in', 'IN'), ('this', 'DT'), ('text', 'NN'), ('.', '.')]]

---

In long :

A list of NLTK datasets can be found by:

>>> import nltk
>>> nltk.download()

And nltk.corpus.brown corpus is one of the most commonly used corpus for Natural Language Processing or text processing (see What is the difference between corpus and lexicon in NLTK (python) for jargons).

In the case of brown corpus, it is a fully tagged and tokenized corpus so all NLTK provided was a reader. To access the various annotations, see section 1.3 at http://www.nltk.org/howto/corpus.html , here's a few examples:

>>> from nltk.corpus import brown
>>> brown.words()[:50]
[u'The', u'Fulton', u'County', u'Grand', u'Jury', u'said', u'Friday', u'an', u'investigation', u'of', u"Atlanta's", u'recent', u'primary', u'election', u'produced', u'``', u'no', u'evidence', u"''", u'that', u'any', u'irregularities', u'took', u'place', u'.', u'The', u'jury', u'further', u'said', u'in', u'term-end', u'presentments', u'that', u'the', u'City', u'Executive', u'Committee', u',', u'which', u'had', u'over-all', u'charge', u'of', u'the', u'election', u',', u'``', u'deserves', u'the', u'praise']
>>> brown.tagged_words()[:50]
[(u'The', u'AT'), (u'Fulton', u'NP-TL'), (u'County', u'NN-TL'), (u'Grand', u'JJ-TL'), (u'Jury', u'NN-TL'), (u'said', u'VBD'), (u'Friday', u'NR'), (u'an', u'AT'), (u'investigation', u'NN'), (u'of', u'IN'), (u"Atlanta's", u'NP$'), (u'recent', u'JJ'), (u'primary', u'NN'), (u'election', u'NN'), (u'produced', u'VBD'), (u'``', u'``'), (u'no', u'AT'), (u'evidence', u'NN'), (u"''", u"''"), (u'that', u'CS'), (u'any', u'DTI'), (u'irregularities', u'NNS'), (u'took', u'VBD'), (u'place', u'NN'), (u'.', u'.'), (u'The', u'AT'), (u'jury', u'NN'), (u'further', u'RBR'), (u'said', u'VBD'), (u'in', u'IN'), (u'term-end', u'NN'), (u'presentments', u'NNS'), (u'that', u'CS'), (u'the', u'AT'), (u'City', u'NN-TL'), (u'Executive', u'JJ-TL'), (u'Committee', u'NN-TL'), (u',', u','), (u'which', u'WDT'), (u'had', u'HVD'), (u'over-all', u'JJ'), (u'charge', u'NN'), (u'of', u'IN'), (u'the', u'AT'), (u'election', u'NN'), (u',', u','), (u'``', u'``'), (u'deserves', u'VBZ'), (u'the', u'AT'), (u'praise', u'NN')]
>>> brown.sents()
[[u'The', u'Fulton', u'County', u'Grand', u'Jury', u'said', u'Friday', u'an', u'investigation', u'of', u"Atlanta's", u'recent', u'primary', u'election', u'produced', u'``', u'no', u'evidence', u"''", u'that', u'any', u'irregularities', u'took', u'place', u'.'], [u'The', u'jury', u'further', u'said', u'in', u'term-end', u'presentments', u'that', u'the', u'City', u'Executive', u'Committee', u',', u'which', u'had', u'over-all', u'charge', u'of', u'the', u'election', u',', u'``', u'deserves', u'the', u'praise', u'and', u'thanks', u'of', u'the', u'City', u'of', u'Atlanta', u"''", u'for', u'the', u'manner', u'in', u'which', u'the', u'election', u'was', u'conducted', u'.'], ...]
>>> brown.sents()[:3]
[[u'The', u'Fulton', u'County', u'Grand', u'Jury', u'said', u'Friday', u'an', u'investigation', u'of', u"Atlanta's", u'recent', u'primary', u'election', u'produced', u'``', u'no', u'evidence', u"''", u'that', u'any', u'irregularities', u'took', u'place', u'.'], [u'The', u'jury', u'further', u'said', u'in', u'term-end', u'presentments', u'that', u'the', u'City', u'Executive', u'Committee', u',', u'which', u'had', u'over-all', u'charge', u'of', u'the', u'election', u',', u'``', u'deserves', u'the', u'praise', u'and', u'thanks', u'of', u'the', u'City', u'of', u'Atlanta', u"''", u'for', u'the', u'manner', u'in', u'which', u'the', u'election', u'was', u'conducted', u'.'], [u'The', u'September-October', u'term', u'jury', u'had', u'been', u'charged', u'by', u'Fulton', u'Superior', u'Court', u'Judge', u'Durwood', u'Pye', u'to', u'investigate', u'reports', u'of', u'possible', u'``', u'irregularities', u"''", u'in', u'the', u'hard-fought', u'primary', u'which', u'was', u'won', u'by', u'Mayor-nominate', u'Ivan', u'Allen', u'Jr.', u'.']]
>>> brown.tagged_sents()[:3]
[[(u'The', u'AT'), (u'Fulton', u'NP-TL'), (u'County', u'NN-TL'), (u'Grand', u'JJ-TL'), (u'Jury', u'NN-TL'), (u'said', u'VBD'), (u'Friday', u'NR'), (u'an', u'AT'), (u'investigation', u'NN'), (u'of', u'IN'), (u"Atlanta's", u'NP$'), (u'recent', u'JJ'), (u'primary', u'NN'), (u'election', u'NN'), (u'produced', u'VBD'), (u'``', u'``'), (u'no', u'AT'), (u'evidence', u'NN'), (u"''", u"''"), (u'that', u'CS'), (u'any', u'DTI'), (u'irregularities', u'NNS'), (u'took', u'VBD'), (u'place', u'NN'), (u'.', u'.')], [(u'The', u'AT'), (u'jury', u'NN'), (u'further', u'RBR'), (u'said', u'VBD'), (u'in', u'IN'), (u'term-end', u'NN'), (u'presentments', u'NNS'), (u'that', u'CS'), (u'the', u'AT'), (u'City', u'NN-TL'), (u'Executive', u'JJ-TL'), (u'Committee', u'NN-TL'), (u',', u','), (u'which', u'WDT'), (u'had', u'HVD'), (u'over-all', u'JJ'), (u'charge', u'NN'), (u'of', u'IN'), (u'the', u'AT'), (u'election', u'NN'), (u',', u','), (u'``', u'``'), (u'deserves', u'VBZ'), (u'the', u'AT'), (u'praise', u'NN'), (u'and', u'CC'), (u'thanks', u'NNS'), (u'of', u'IN'), (u'the', u'AT'), (u'City', u'NN-TL'), (u'of', u'IN-TL'), (u'Atlanta', u'NP-TL'), (u"''", u"''"), (u'for', u'IN'), (u'the', u'AT'), (u'manner', u'NN'), (u'in', u'IN'), (u'which', u'WDT'), (u'the', u'AT'), (u'election', u'NN'), (u'was', u'BEDZ'), (u'conducted', u'VBN'), (u'.', u'.')], [(u'The', u'AT'), (u'September-October', u'NP'), (u'term', u'NN'), (u'jury', u'NN'), (u'had', u'HVD'), (u'been', u'BEN'), (u'charged', u'VBN'), (u'by', u'IN'), (u'Fulton', u'NP-TL'), (u'Superior', u'JJ-TL'), (u'Court', u'NN-TL'), (u'Judge', u'NN-TL'), (u'Durwood', u'NP'), (u'Pye', u'NP'), (u'to', u'TO'), (u'investigate', u'VB'), (u'reports', u'NNS'), (u'of', u'IN'), (u'possible', u'JJ'), (u'``', u'``'), (u'irregularities', u'NNS'), (u"''", u"''"), (u'in', u'IN'), (u'the', u'AT'), (u'hard-fought', u'JJ'), (u'primary', u'NN'), (u'which', u'WDT'), (u'was', u'BEDZ'), (u'won', u'VBN'), (u'by', u'IN'), (u'Mayor-nominate', u'NN-TL'), (u'Ivan', u'NP'), (u'Allen', u'NP'), (u'Jr.', u'NP'), (u'.', u'.')]]

The structure for:

• nltk.corpus.brown.words() is a list of string, where each item in the list is a word
• nltk.corpus.brown.tagged_words() is a list of tuples with the first element as the word and the 2nd element in the tuple as the tag
• nltk.corpus.sents() is a list of a list of string, where the other list comprises the whole corpus and the inner list is one sentence
• nltk.corpus.tagged_sents() is a list of list of tuples, where it's the same as nltk.corpus.sents() but the inner list is a tuple of word and tag.