syllable

syllable is a small collection of tools for counting syllables and polysyllables. The tools rely primarily on data.table hash table lookups, resulting in fast syllable counting.

Table of Contents

• Main Functions
  • Actions
  • Objects
  • Putting It Together
• Installation
• Contact
• Examples
  • Count Syllables In a String
  • Count Syllables In a Vector of Strings
  • Sum the Syllables In a Vector of Strings by Grouping Variable(s)
  • Tally the Short/Poly-Syllabic Words by Group(s)
  • Readability Word Statistics by Grouping Variable(s)
  • Visualize Poly Syllable Distributions
  • Visualize Poly Syllable Distributions by Group

Main Functions

The main functions follow the format of action_object.

Actions

The following table outlines the actions. Example Output correspond to this string: "I like chicken sandwiches.".

Action	Description	Returns	Example Output
count	One integer per word	A vector per string	1, 1, 2, 3
sum	Sum of syllable counts	An integer per string	7
tally*	Sum of syllable attributes	An integer per string	pollysyllable tallies = 1

* The addition of _mono, _di, _poly _short (monosyllabic + disyllabic), or _both (short & pollysyllabic) to tally allows the user specify what syllable attribute is being tallied.

Objects

The following table outlines the objects acted upon:

Object	Description	Example
string	A character string	"I like chicken sandwiches."
vector*	A vector of character strings	c("I like it.", "Look out!")

* The addition of _by to vector allows the user to aggregate by one or more vectors of grouping variables.

Putting It Together

The function count_vector will provide a vector of integer counts for each word in a string. For this reason count_vector will return a list of integer vector counts.

count_vector(c("I like it.", "Look out!"))

## $`1`
## [1] 1 1 1
## 
## $`2`
## [1] 1 1

Each of the main functions is optimized to do its task efficiently. While one could use sum(count_vector(x)) and achieve the same results as sum_vector(x) it would be less efficient.

The available syllable functions that follow the format of action_object are:

count_string

tally_both_string

tally_mono_string

tally_short_string

count_vector

tally_both_vector

tally_mono_vector

tally_short_vector

count_vector_by

tally_both_vector_by

tally_mono_vector_by

tally_short_vector_by

sum_string

tally_di_string

tally_poly_string

sum_vector

tally_di_vector

tally_poly_vector

sum_vector_by

tally_di_vector_by

tally_poly_vector_by

Available Variable Functions

Installation

To download the development version of syllable:

Download the zip ball or tar ball, decompress and run R CMD INSTALL on it, or use the pacman package to install the development version:

if (!require("pacman")) install.packages("pacman")
pacman::p_load_gh(
    'trinker/lexicon',
    'trinker/textclean',
    'trinker/textshape',
    'trinker/syllable'
)

Contact

You are welcome to:

• submit suggestions and bug-reports at: https://github.com/trinker/syllable/issues
• send a pull request on: https://github.com/trinker/syllable/
• compose a friendly e-mail to: tyler.rinker@gmail.com

Examples

The following examples demonstrate the functionality of a select sample of syllable functions.

Count Syllables In a String

Counts the number of syllables for each word in a string.

count_string("I like chicken and eggs for breakfast")

## [1] 1 1 2 1 1 1 2

Count Syllables In a Vector of Strings

sents <- c("I like chicken.", "I want eggs benidict for breakfast.")
count_vector(sents)

## $`1`
## [1] 1 1 2
## 
## $`2`
## [1] 1 1 1 3 1 2

Map(function(x, y) setNames(x, y),
   count_vector(sents),
   strsplit(gsub("[^a-z ]", "", tolower(sents)), "\\s+")
)

## $`1`
##       i    like chicken 
##       1       1       2 
## 
## $`2`
##         i      want      eggs  benidict       for breakfast 
##         1         1         1         3         1         2

Sum the Syllables In a Vector of Strings by Grouping Variable(s)

dat <- data.frame(
   text = c("I like chicken.", "I want eggs benedict for breakfast.", "Really?"),
   group = c("A", "B", "A")
)
sum_vector_by(dat$text, dat$group)

## # A tibble: 2 x 3
##    group n.words count
##   <fctr>   <int> <dbl>
## 1      A       4     7
## 2      B       6     9

Tally the Short/Poly-Syllabic Words by Group(s)

dat <- data.frame(
   text = c("I like excellent chicken.", "I want eggs benedict now.", "Really?"),
   group = c("A", "B", "A")
)
tally_both_vector_by(dat$text, dat$group)

## # A tibble: 2 x 4
##    group n.words short  poly
##   <fctr>   <int> <int> <int>
## 1      A       5     3     2
## 2      B       5     4     1

with(presidential_debates_2012, tally_both_vector_by(dialogue, person))

## # A tibble: 6 x 4
##      person n.words short  poly
##      <fctr>   <int> <int> <int>
## 1     OBAMA   18319 16286  2033
## 2    ROMNEY   19924 17858  2066
## 3   CROWLEY    1672  1525   147
## 4    LEHRER     765   674    91
## 5  QUESTION     583   486    97
## 6 SCHIEFFER    1445  1289   156

Readability Word Statistics by Grouping Variable(s)

with(presidential_debates_2012, readability_word_stats_by(dialogue, list(person, time)))

## # A tibble: 10 x 9
##       person   time n.sents n.words n.chars n.sylls n.shorts n.polys
## *     <fctr> <fctr>   <int>   <int>   <int>   <dbl>    <int>   <int>
## 1      OBAMA time 1     179    3599   16002    5221     3221     378
## 2      OBAMA time 2     494    7477   32459   10654     6696     781
## 3      OBAMA time 3     405    7243   32288   10675     6369     874
## 4     ROMNEY time 1     279    4085   17984    5875     3646     439
## 5     ROMNEY time 2     560    7536   32504   10720     6788     748
## 6     ROMNEY time 3     569    8303   35824   11883     7424     879
## 7    CROWLEY time 2     165    1672    6904    2308     1525     147
## 8     LEHRER time 1      87     765    3256    1087      674      91
## 9   QUESTION time 2      40     583    2765     930      486      97
## 10 SCHIEFFER time 3     133    1445    6234    2058     1289     156
## # ... with 1 more variables: n.complexes <int>

Visualize Poly Syllable Distributions

if (!require("pacman")) install.packages("pacman")
pacman::p_load(dplyr, ggplot2, scales)

tally_both_vector(presidential_debates_2012$dialogue) %>%
    mutate(Duration = 1:length(poly)) %>%
    rowwise() %>%
    filter((short + poly) > 4) %>%
    mutate(
        short = short/(short+poly),
        poly = 1 - short,
        size = poly > .3
    ) %>%
    ggplot(aes(Duration, poly)) +
        geom_text(aes(label = Duration, size = size, color = size)) +
        coord_flip() +
        scale_size_manual(values = c(1.5, 2.5), guide=FALSE) +
        scale_color_manual(values = c("grey75", "black"), guide=FALSE) +
        scale_x_reverse() +
        scale_y_continuous(label = scales::percent) +
        ylab("Poly-syllabic") +
        xlab("Duration (sentences)") +
        theme_bw() 

Visualize Poly Syllable Distributions by Group

if (!require("pacman")) install.packages("pacman")
pacman::p_load(dplyr, ggplot2, tidyr, scales)

with(presidential_debates_2012, tally_both_vector_by(dialogue, list(person, time))) %>%
    mutate(
        person_time = paste(person, time, sep = "-"),
        short = short/(short+poly),
        poly = 1 - short
    ) %>%
    arrange(poly) %>%
    mutate(person_time = factor(person_time, levels = person_time)) %>%
    gather(type, prop, c(short, poly)) %>%
    ggplot(aes(person_time, weight = prop, fill = type)) +
        geom_bar() +
        coord_flip() +        
        scale_y_continuous(label = scales::percent) +
        scale_fill_discrete(name="Syllable\nType") +
        xlab("Person & Time") +
        ylab("Usage") +
        theme_bw()