Reading CHAT Data#
The rustling.chat module handles conversational data represented in the CHAT format
as used in the TalkBank / CHILDES database for language acquisition research.
CHAT is documented in its official manual.
This page describes the ways CHAT data can be read by the rustling.chat module.
Initializing a CHAT Data Object#
read_chat()#
Reading CHAT data is all about creating a CHAT object.
The most convenient way to do it is to use the read_chat() function,
which asks for a data source and several optional arguments.
As an example, let’s use the Brown
dataset of American English on CHILDES.
On this webpage, after you’ve logged in (account setup is free),
you should be able to download the full transcripts of CHAT data as a ZIP archive to your local drive.
import rustling
brown = rustling.read_chat("path/to/your/local/Brown.zip")
read_chat() automatically handles everything behind the scenes for you,
from unzipping the ZIP archive, traversing through the CHAT files found,
as well as parsing the files.
brown.info()
# 214 files
# 184635 utterances
# 841281 words
# Utterance Count Word Count File Path
# -- --------------- ---------- ---------------------
# #1 1737 6328 Brown/Adam/020304.cha
# #2 1972 7587 Brown/Adam/020318.cha
# #3 1305 5431 Brown/Adam/020403.cha
# #4 1224 4438 Brown/Adam/020415.cha
# #5 1344 5375 Brown/Adam/020430.cha
# ...
# (set `verbose` to True for all the files)
For a quick preview of what the data looks like,
The head() and tail() methods
provide a quick preview of what the data looks like:
brown.head()
# *CHI: play checkers .
# %mor: verb|play-Fin-Imp-S noun|checker-Plur-Acc .
# %gra: 1|2|ROOT 2|1|OBJ 3|1|PUNCT
# %xpho: <1> pe
# *CHI: big drum .
# %mor: adj|big-S1 noun|drum .
# %gra: 1|2|AMOD 2|2|ROOT 3|2|PUNCT
# *MOT: big drum ?
# %mor: adj|big-S1 noun|drum ?
# %gra: 1|2|AMOD 2|2|ROOT 3|2|PUNCT
# *CHI: big drum .
# %mor: adj|big-S1 noun|drum .
# %gra: 1|2|AMOD 2|2|ROOT 3|2|PUNCT
# %spa: $IMIT
# *CHI: big drum .
# %mor: adj|big-S1 noun|drum .
# %gra: 1|2|AMOD 2|2|ROOT 3|2|PUNCT
# %spa: $IMIT
In practice, you likely only need a subset of the data at a time, e.g.,
focusing on a particular child. The Brown dataset contains data for the three children
Adam, Eve, and Sarah. Suppose you need Eve’s data only.
read_chat() takes the optional argument filter_files which, if specified,
filters the data down to the matching file paths.
To know what the file paths look like and therefore determine what the filter_files
argument should be,
the brown CHAT reader we’ve just created
can tell you that via file_paths():
brown.file_paths
# ['Brown/Adam/020304.cha',
# 'Brown/Adam/020318.cha',
# ...
# 'Brown/Eve/010600a.cha',
# 'Brown/Eve/010600b.cha',
# ...
# 'Brown/Sarah/020305.cha',
# 'Brown/Sarah/020307.cha',
# ...
# 'Brown/Sarah/050106.cha']
It looks like all and only Eve’s data is inside the subdirectory called "Eve".
If we pass "Eve" to filter_files, we should be getting only Eve’s data this time:
eve = rustling.read_chat("path/to/your/local/Brown.zip", filter_files="Eve")
eve.n_files
# 20
len(eve.utterances())
# 26969
So far, we’ve seen how read_chat() works with a local ZIP file.
Other data sources that this function is designed for are:
A directory (i.e., folder) on your local system, where CHAT data files are found immediately or recursively in subdirectories:
chat_data = rustling.read_chat("path/to/your/local/directory/")
A single CHAT file on your system:
chat_data = rustling.read_chat("path/to/your/local/data.cha")
A git repository URL (ending in
.git):
chat_data = rustling.read_chat("https://github.com/user/corpus.git")
An HTTP/HTTPS URL (ZIP files are automatically detected and extracted):
chat_data = rustling.read_chat("https://example.com/corpus.zip")
read_chat() is designed to cover the common use cases of reading in CHAT data.
Under the hood, it is a wrapper of several classmethods of CHAT,
some of which aren’t available from read_chat().
These classmethods are introduced in the following,
where CHAT is assumed to have been imported:
from rustling.chat import CHAT
From a ZIP File or Local Directory#
Perhaps you don’t want read_chat() to do the guess work of
what type of your data source is, or you want more fine-grained control
of what counts as CHAT data files or not in your data source.
While read_chat() already handles a ZIP archive file and
a local directory, the CHAT classmethods
from_zip() and from_dir()
allow more optional arguments for customization.
Here’s sample code for using these classmethods in the base case:
chat_data = CHAT.from_zip("path/to/your/local/data.zip")
chat_data = CHAT.from_dir("path/to/your/local/directory/")
From Local CHAT Data Files#
If you’d like to target specific CHAT files,
from_files() takes a list of file paths:
path1 = "path/to/one/data/file.cha"
path2 = "path/to/another/data/file.cha"
chat_data = CHAT.from_files([path1, path2])
From In-Memory Strings#
If your CHAT data comes from in-memory strings,
from_strs() takes a list of strings,
where each string is assumed to conform to the
CHAT data format:
# Let's create some minimal CHAT data as a string.
data = "*CHI:\tI want cookie .\n*MOT:\tokay ."
# We should see two utterances.
print(data)
# *CHI: I want cookie .
# *MOT: okay .
chat_data = CHAT.from_strs([data])
len(chat_data.utterances())
# 2
# All "file" terminology still applies.
# Each CHAT data string you pass in is treated as one "file".
chat_data.n_files
# 1
chat_data.utterances()
# [Utterance(participant='CHI', tokens=[...4 tokens], time_marks=None),
# Utterance(participant='MOT', tokens=[...2 tokens], time_marks=None)]
We are getting ahead of ourselves by showing the result
of utterances().
We are going to drill down to this and many other functions
in the upcoming parts of the documentation,
but this quick example gives you a glimpse of how rustling.chat represents CHAT data.
From a Git Repository#
from_git() clones a git repository
(or uses a cached clone) and parses all matching CHAT files:
chat_data = CHAT.from_git("https://github.com/user/corpus.git")
From a URL#
from_url() downloads a file from a URL
(or uses a cached copy) and parses it.
ZIP files are automatically detected and extracted:
chat_data = CHAT.from_url("https://example.com/corpus.zip")
From Utterance Objects#
If you already have a list of Utterance objects,
from_utterances() lets you construct a new
CHAT reader directly from them:
utts = eve.utterances()[:5]
chat_data = CHAT.from_utterances(utts)
chat_data.words()
# ['more', 'cookie', '.', 'you', 'more', 'cookies', '?', ...]
For more details and examples, see Creating a CHAT Object from Utterance Objects.
Custom Tiers for Morphology and Grammatical Relations#
By default, rustling.chat parses the %mor (morphology) and %gra (grammatical relation)
dependent tiers in CHAT data. Some datasets, however, use non-standard tier names
for morphological and grammatical annotations — for example, %xmor and %xgra.
The mor_tier and gra_tier keyword arguments let you tell rustling.chat
which tiers to treat as morphology and grammar tiers during parsing.
These arguments are available on
from_strs(),
from_files(),
from_dir(), and
from_zip().
To specify custom tier names, pass them as strings.
For instance, to treat %xmor as the morphology tier:
chat_data = CHAT.from_zip(
"path/to/data.zip",
mor_tier="%xmor",
)
If your data has either morphology or grammatical relation tiers, but you’d like to skip parsing
them entirely (to only handle the main tier with transcriptions, to avoid parsing issues, etc.),
pass None for either argument
(note that setting either one to None disables both tiers):
# Skip morphology and grammar tier parsing
chat_data = CHAT.from_zip(
"path/to/data.zip",
mor_tier=None,
gra_tier=None,
)
Parallel Processing#
Because a CHILDES / TalkBank dataset usually comes with multiple CHAT data files,
it is reasonable to parallelize the process of reading and parsing CHAT data for speed-up.
By default, such parallelization is applied.
If you would like to turn off parallel processing
(e.g., because your application is already parallelized, and further parallelization
from within rustling.chat would create undesirable effects),
the boolean argument parallel is available at
from_zip(),
from_dir(),
from_files(), and
from_strs(),
and you may set it to False .
Creating an Empty CHAT Object#
Calling CHAT itself with no arguments initializes an empty reader:
chat_data = CHAT()
chat_data.n_files
# 0
An empty data object is useful when you’d like to start with no data
and “grow” it by having data added as necessary.
The section below discusses how to manipulate a CHAT object.
Adding and Removing Data#
A CHAT keeps the linear ordering of CHAT data
by the ordering of the source data files.
CHAT data typically comes as data files that each represent a recording session.
There is, therefore, a natural ordering of the files by time,
for when the recordings were made.
The ordering is also commonly reflected by the way CHAT data files are named,
typically by the age of the target child.
For this reason, if your input data source is a ZIP file or local directory,
the resulting CHAT object has the data automatically sorted
based on file paths.
With the knowledge that data is ordered by files in a CHAT,
it is reasonable for a CHAT to append or drop data,
and to do so from either end for flexible data analysis and modeling.
Think of a CHAT object more or less like a double-ended queue.
The following CHAT methods support adding and removing data
(many of them inspired by deque):
Among these methods, filter() creates and
returns a new CHAT
without altering the original one.
All the other methods work by mutating the calling CHAT in-place.
For convenience, the addition operator + is defined for CHAT
objects, and can be used to concatenate two CHAT objects.
By extension, += is also valid, so a statement in the form of reader1 += reader2
would mutate reader1 by concatenating the two readers.
A CHAT can be iterated upon
(e.g., for reader_one_file in reader: ...),
where the element in each iteration is a CHAT for one data file.
Slicing (reader[:5], reader[3:6], etc) is also supported,
which gives you a CHAT object (which is iterable)
for the specified data files.
To inspect what data files are in a reader and their ordering
(as well as extract their indices, if necessary),
file_paths() gives you the list of file paths.
The following example illustrates how to build a reader of Eve’s utterances starting from an empty one and adding data to it one file at a time.
new_chat = CHAT() # empty CHAT object
for eve_one_file in eve[:5]:
new_chat += eve_one_file # Note that new_chat is updated in-place.
print(
"Number of utterances so far:",
len(new_chat.utterances()),
)
# Number of utterances so far: 1589
# Number of utterances so far: 2879
# Number of utterances so far: 3497
# Number of utterances so far: 4950
# Number of utterances so far: 6431
filter() is designed to return
a new CHAT
so that we can instantiate a source CHAT for a TalkBank / CHILDES dataset
and filter it down to specific file paths or participants.
Typically, a dataset contains multiple participants’ data
organized by a directory structure.
filter() allows us to easily create CHAT objects
for individual children without re-loading data from scratch:
path = "path/to/your/local/Brown.zip"
brown = rustling.read_chat(path)
brown.n_files # All CHAT files in the Brown dataset
# 214
# Eve's data is all Brown/Eve/*.cha -- match the "Eve" substring
eve = brown.filter(files="Eve")
eve.n_files
# 20
eve_chi = eve.filter(participants="CHI") # child speech
eve_chi.head()
# *CHI: more cookie .
# %mor: adj|more-Cmp-S1 noun|cookie .
# %gra: 1|2|AMOD 2|2|ROOT 3|2|PUNCT
# %int: distinctive , loud
# *CHI: more cookie .
# %mor: adj|more-Cmp-S1 noun|cookie .
# %gra: 1|2|AMOD 2|2|ROOT 3|2|PUNCT
# %int: distinctive , loud
# *CHI: more juice ?
# %mor: adj|more-Cmp-S1 noun|juice ?
# %gra: 1|2|AMOD 2|2|ROOT 3|2|PUNCT
# *CHI: Fraser .
# %mor: propn|Fraser .
# %gra: 1|1|ROOT 2|1|PUNCT
# %com: pronounces Fraser as fr&jdij .
# *CHI: Fraser .
# %mor: propn|Fraser .
# %gra: 1|1|ROOT 2|1|PUNCT
eve_cds = eve.filter(participants="^(?!CHI$)") # child-directed speech, regex ^(?!CHI$) for "not CHI"
eve_cds.head()
# *MOT: you more cookies ?
# %mor: pron|you-Prs-Acc-S2 adj|more-Cmp-S1 noun|cookie-Plur ?
# %gra: 1|3|NSUBJ 2|3|AMOD 3|3|ROOT 4|3|PUNCT
# *MOT: how_about another graham cracker ?
# %mor: intj|howabout det|another-Def-Ind noun|graham noun|cracker ?
# %gra: 1|4|DISCOURSE 2|4|DET 3|4|COMPOUND 4|4|ROOT 5|4|PUNCT
# *MOT: would that do just as well ?
# %mor: aux|would-Fin-S pron|that-Dem verb|do-Inf-S adv|just adv|as adv|well ?
# %gra: 1|3|AUX 2|3|NSUBJ 3|6|ROOT 4|5|ADVMOD 5|3|ADVMOD 6|5|FIXED 7|3|PUNCT
# *MOT: here .
# %mor: adv|here .
# %gra: 1|1|ROOT 2|1|PUNCT
# *MOT: here you go .
# %mor: adv|here pron|you-Prs-Nom-S2 verb|go-Fin-Ind-Pres-S2 .
# %gra: 1|3|ROOT 2|3|NSUBJ 3|1|ADVCL-RELCL 4|1|PUNCT