Several proposals to encode Interlinear Glossed Text (IGT) have been made over the last 20 years. Among them the
- Leipzig Glossing Rules (LGR) - a set of rules to encode IGT in plain text.
- XIGT
- TypeCraft - a repository for IGT data including a custom XML export format.
- CLDF's Examples component.
This recipe shows how to convert a TypeCraft IGT corpus to a CLDF dataset. Since there is no CLDF module for text collections yet (although this recipe may serve as blueprint for one), we create a generic CLDF dataset, introducing a custom table storing data about texts, i.e. collections of related IGT phrases within a corpus.
In the following, we use the Release 1.0 of thw Akan Corpus.
The Python script to_cldf.py uses
- the
typecraft_pythonpackage - to parse TypeCraft XML - the
pycldfpackage to create CLDF datasets.
Both packages can be installed using pip.
The Python script to_cldf.py expects the path to a TypeCraft XML file as parameter, i.e. it must be invoked like
python to_cldf.py Akan_release1.xml
This will create a directory cldf in the current working directory, containing the
files making up the CLDF dataset.
It will also print LGR serializations of the data to the screen.
Converting the CLDF data back to TypeCraft XML is possible, but would require some heuristics because TypeCraft distinguishes between meaning and gloss whereas LGR concatenates meaning and other metalanguage elements.
Now that we have the corpus available as CLDF, off-the-shelf CSV tools like
csvkit can be used to analyze the data. E.g. a search for examples containing the gloss element ANIM can be done as follows:
$ csvgrep -c Gloss -m "ANIM" cldf/examples.csv | csvgrep -c Gloss -m "INANIM" -i | csvcut -c Primary_Text,Gloss
Primary_Text,Gloss
Abɔfra a ɔbɛkyeaa me no kɔ,SG-child.SBJ\\tREL\\tshe--greet-\\tme.1SG\\t3SG.ANIM\\tgo
Kaja dɔ osuani no,SBJ\\tlove\\t3SG-learn-ANIM\\tDEF
Kofi bɛtɔn no ɔkyena,Kofi.SBJ\\tFUT.H-sell\\t3SG.OBJ.ANIM\\ttomorrow
Kofi bɛkyea no,K.SBJ\\tFUT.H-greet\\t3SG.ANIM.OBJ
kofi bɛmoa no,Kofi.SBJ\\tFUT.H-crumple\\t3SG.OBJ.ANIM
kofi bɛsɛe no,Kofi.SBJ\\twill.FUT.H-destroy\\t3SG.OBJ.ANIM