Use of PunktSentenceTokenizer in NLTK

Question

I am learning Natural Language Processing using NLTK. I came across the code using PunktSentenceTokenizer whose actual use I cannot understand in the given code. The code is given :

import nltk
from nltk.corpus import state_union
from nltk.tokenize import PunktSentenceTokenizer

train_text = state_union.raw("2005-GWBush.txt")
sample_text = state_union.raw("2006-GWBush.txt")

custom_sent_tokenizer = PunktSentenceTokenizer(train_text) #A

tokenized = custom_sent_tokenizer.tokenize(sample_text)   #B

def process_content():
try:
    for i in tokenized[:5]:
        words = nltk.word_tokenize(i)
        tagged = nltk.pos_tag(words)
        print(tagged)

except Exception as e:
    print(str(e))


process_content()

So, why do we use PunktSentenceTokenizer. And what is going on in the line marked A and B. I mean there is a training text and the other a sample text, but what is the need for two data sets to get the Part of Speech tagging.

Line marked as A and B is which I am not able to understand.

PS : I did try to look in the NLTK book but could not understand what is the real use of PunktSentenceTokenizer

Answer 1

PunktSentenceTokenizer is the abstract class for the default sentence tokenizer, i.e. sent_tokenize(), provided in NLTK. It is an implmentation of Unsupervised Multilingual Sentence Boundary Detection (Kiss and Strunk (2005). See https://github.com/nltk/nltk/blob/develop/nltk/tokenize/init.py#L79

Given a paragraph with multiple sentence, e.g:

>>> from nltk.corpus import state_union
>>> train_text = state_union.raw("2005-GWBush.txt").split('\n')
>>> train_text[11]
u'Two weeks ago, I stood on the steps of this Capitol and renewed the commitment of our nation to the guiding ideal of liberty for all. This evening I will set forth policies to advance that ideal at home and around the world. '

You can use the sent_tokenize():

>>> sent_tokenize(train_text[11])
[u'Two weeks ago, I stood on the steps of this Capitol and renewed the commitment of our nation to the guiding ideal of liberty for all.', u'This evening I will set forth policies to advance that ideal at home and around the world. ']
>>> for sent in sent_tokenize(train_text[11]):
...     print sent
...     print '--------'
... 
Two weeks ago, I stood on the steps of this Capitol and renewed the commitment of our nation to the guiding ideal of liberty for all.
--------
This evening I will set forth policies to advance that ideal at home and around the world. 
--------

The sent_tokenize() uses a pre-trained model from nltk_data/tokenizers/punkt/english.pickle. You can also specify other languages, the list of available languages with pre-trained models in NLTK are:

alvas@ubi:~/nltk_data/tokenizers/punkt$ ls
czech.pickle     finnish.pickle  norwegian.pickle   slovene.pickle
danish.pickle    french.pickle   polish.pickle      spanish.pickle
dutch.pickle     german.pickle   portuguese.pickle  swedish.pickle
english.pickle   greek.pickle    PY3                turkish.pickle
estonian.pickle  italian.pickle  README

Given a text in another language, do this:

>>> german_text = u"Die Orgellandschaft Südniedersachsen umfasst das Gebiet der Landkreise Goslar, Göttingen, Hameln-Pyrmont, Hildesheim, Holzminden, Northeim und Osterode am Harz sowie die Stadt Salzgitter. Über 70 historische Orgeln vom 17. bis 19. Jahrhundert sind in der südniedersächsischen Orgellandschaft vollständig oder in Teilen erhalten. "

>>> for sent in sent_tokenize(german_text, language='german'):
...     print sent
...     print '---------'
... 
Die Orgellandschaft Südniedersachsen umfasst das Gebiet der Landkreise Goslar, Göttingen, Hameln-Pyrmont, Hildesheim, Holzminden, Northeim und Osterode am Harz sowie die Stadt Salzgitter.
---------
Über 70 historische Orgeln vom 17. bis 19. Jahrhundert sind in der südniedersächsischen Orgellandschaft vollständig oder in Teilen erhalten. 
---------

To train your own punkt model, see https://github.com/nltk/nltk/blob/develop/nltk/tokenize/punkt.py and training data format for nltk punkt