quanteda (version 1.5.2)

tokens_compound: Convert token sequences into compound tokens

Description

Replace multi-token sequences with a multi-word, or "compound" token. The resulting compound tokens will represent a phrase or multi-word expression, concatenated with concatenator (by default, the "_" character) to form a single "token". This ensures that the sequences will be processed subsequently as single tokens, for instance in constructing a dfm.

Usage

tokens_compound(
  x,
  pattern,
  concatenator = "_",
  valuetype = c("glob", "regex", "fixed"),
  case_insensitive = TRUE,
  join = TRUE
)

Arguments

x

an input tokens object

pattern

a character vector, list of character vectors, dictionary, or collocations object. See pattern for details.

concatenator

the concatenation character that will connect the words making up the multi-word sequences. The default _ is recommended since it will not be removed during normal cleaning and tokenization (while nearly all other punctuation characters, at least those in the Unicode punctuation class [P] will be removed).

valuetype

the type of pattern matching: "glob" for "glob"-style wildcard expressions; "regex" for regular expressions; or "fixed" for exact matching. See valuetype for details.

case_insensitive

logical; if TRUE, ignore case when matching. When pattern is a collocations, case-sensitive operation is significantly faster than case-insensitive operation.

join

logical; if TRUE, join overlapping compounds into a single compound; otherwise, form these separately. See examples.

Value

A tokens object in which the token sequences matching pattern have been replaced by compound "tokens" joined by the concatenator.

Examples

# NOT RUN {
txt <- "The United Kingdom is leaving the European Union."
toks <- tokens(txt, remove_punct = TRUE)

# character vector - not compounded
tokens_compound(toks, c("United", "Kingdom", "European", "Union"))

# elements separated by spaces - not compounded
tokens_compound(toks, c("United Kingdom", "European Union"))

# list of characters - is compounded
tokens_compound(toks, list(c("United", "Kingdom"), c("European", "Union")))

# elements separated by spaces, wrapped in phrase)() - is compounded
tokens_compound(toks, phrase(c("United Kingdom", "European Union")))

# supplied as values in a dictionary (same as list) - is compounded
# (keys do not matter)
tokens_compound(toks, dictionary(list(key1 = "United Kingdom", 
                                      key2 = "European Union")))
# pattern as dictionaries with glob matches
tokens_compound(toks, dictionary(list(key1 = c("U* K*"))), valuetype = "glob")

# supplied as collocations - is compounded
colls <- tokens("The new European Union is not the old European Union.") %>%
    textstat_collocations(size = 2, min_count = 1, tolower = FALSE)
tokens_compound(toks, colls, case_insensitive = FALSE)

# note the differences caused by join = FALSE
compounds <- list(c("the", "European"), c("European", "Union"))
tokens_compound(toks, pattern = compounds, join = TRUE)
tokens_compound(toks, pattern = compounds, join = FALSE)
# }