chatconllu

Conversion scripts between CHILDES CHAT format and UD CoNLL-U format.

Known Issues

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• repetitive feature strings in Italian Corpus
• header organisation needs to be revised

Installation

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Prerequisites

Python Version >= 3.6

I'm using poetry for dependency management. Follow these instructions to install poetry. After cloning this repo, change directory to the chatconllu folder with Makefile:

cd chatconllu
make install

Install chatconllu

make installchatconllu

Example Usage

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From .cha files to .conllu files

chatconllu <CHILDES databases dir> <database name(s)>

Example

If your Brown Corpus is stored in ./tests/eng/Brown and you wish to convert only the .cha files in Adam and Eve but not Sarah, you should use the following command:

chatconllu ./tests/eng/Brown Adam Eve

The output .conllu files will be in the same folder.

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From .conllu files to .cha files

Use -f or --format to specify the input format, defualts to cha, accepts cha and conllu.

chatconllu <CHILDES databases dir> -f conllu <database name(s)>

Example

If you wish to convert only the .conllu files back, use:

chatconllu ./tests/eng/Brown -f conllu Adam Eve

The output .cha files will NOT be in the same folder, they will appear in out/

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Suppress existing dependent tiers

If you'd like to disregard the %mor (--no-mor) or %gra (--no-gra) tiers (or both) and mute the MISC field (--no-misc), try:

chatconllu <CHILDES databases dir> <database name(s)> --no-mor --no-gra --no-misc

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Generating new dependent tiers

If you, for some reason, would like to generate a new (and empty) %mor (--new-mor) or %gra (--new-gra) tiers (or both), try:

chatconllu <CHILDES databases dir> <database name(s)> --new-mor --new-gra

Empty values are represented by _.

However, if you pass .conllu files through UDPipe and want to generate dependent tiers based on the augmented information, you could use:

chatconllu <CHILDES databases dir> <database name> -f conllu -fn <processed conllu file> --cnl --pos

• -fn: specifies a filename (without extension)
• --cnl: generates a %cnl tier, handles syntax (dependency relations), it's similar to %gra
• --pos: generates a %pos tier, handles morphology (without features), it's similar to %mor

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Validating .cha files

Using CLAN CHECK Program

• install CLAN
• open .cha file with CLAN
• run CHECK

Using Chatter.jar

Prerequisites

• at least Java 8
• download chatter.jar and follow the instructions here.
• commandline:

java -cp <path to chatter.jar> org.talkbank.chatter.App -inputFormat cha -outputFormat xml -tree <cha files dir> -outputDir <output dir>

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Validating .conllu files

Prerequisites

• clone UniversalDependencies/tools/ or download UniversalDependencies/tools/data/.
• use validate.py from UniversalDependencies/tools/validate.py.

python <path to validate.py> --lang <2-letter language code> --level <level from 1 to 5> <path to conllu file>

Current state of chatconllu supports max level-2 tests (tested on English with Brown Corpus).