Sample usage for concordance

Concordance Example

A concordance view shows us every occurrence of a given word, together with some context. Here we look up the word monstrous in Moby Dick by entering text1 followed by a period, then the term concordance, and then placing “monstrous” in parentheses:

>>> from nltk.corpus import gutenberg
>>> from nltk.text import Text
>>> corpus = gutenberg.words('melville-moby_dick.txt')
>>> text = Text(corpus)

>>> text.concordance("monstrous")
Displaying 11 of 11 matches:
ong the former , one was of a most monstrous size . ... This came towards us ,
ON OF THE PSALMS . " Touching that monstrous bulk of the whale or ork we have r
ll over with a heathenish array of monstrous clubs and spears . Some were thick
d as you gazed , and wondered what monstrous cannibal and savage could ever hav
that has survived the flood ; most monstrous and most mountainous ! That Himmal
they might scout at Moby Dick as a monstrous fable , or still worse and more de
th of Radney .'" CHAPTER 55 Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales . I shall ere l
ing Scenes . In connexion with the monstrous pictures of whales , I am strongly
ere to enter upon those still more monstrous stories of them which are to be fo
ght have been rummaged out of this monstrous cabinet there is no telling . But
of Whale - Bones ; for Whales of a monstrous size are oftentimes cast up dead u

>>> text.concordance("monstrous")
Displaying 11 of 11 matches:
ong the former , one was of a most monstrous size . ... This came towards us ,
ON OF THE PSALMS . " Touching that monstrous bulk of the whale or ork we have r
ll over with a heathenish array of monstrous clubs and spears . Some were thick
...

We can also search for a multi-word phrase by passing a list of strings:

>>> text.concordance(["monstrous", "size"])
Displaying 2 of 2 matches:
the former , one was of a most monstrous size . ... This came towards us , op
Whale - Bones ; for Whales of a monstrous size are oftentimes cast up dead upo

Concordance List

Often we need to store the results of concordance for further usage. To do so, call the concordance function with the stdout argument set to false:

>>> from nltk.corpus import gutenberg
>>> from nltk.text import Text
>>> corpus = gutenberg.words('melville-moby_dick.txt')
>>> text = Text(corpus)
>>> con_list = text.concordance_list("monstrous")
>>> con_list[2].line
'll over with a heathenish array of monstrous clubs and spears . Some were thick'
>>> len(con_list)
11

Patching Issue #2088

Patching https://github.com/nltk/nltk/issues/2088 The left slice of the left context should be clip to 0 if the i-context < 0.

>>> from nltk import Text, word_tokenize
>>> jane_eyre = 'Chapter 1\nTHERE was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further outdoor exercise was now out of the question.'
>>> text = Text(word_tokenize(jane_eyre))
>>> text.concordance_list('taking')[0].left
['Chapter', '1', 'THERE', 'was', 'no', 'possibility', 'of']