Search icon CANCEL
Arrow left icon
Explore Products
Best Sellers
New Releases
Books
Videos
Audiobooks
Learning Hub
Conferences
Free Learning
Arrow right icon
Natural Language Processing and Computational Linguistics
Natural Language Processing and Computational Linguistics

Natural Language Processing and Computational Linguistics: A practical guide to text analysis with Python, Gensim, spaCy, and Keras

Arrow left icon
Profile Icon Bhargav Srinivasa-Desikan
Arrow right icon
$19.99 per month
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Half star icon Empty star icon 3.6 (7 Ratings)
Paperback Jun 2018 306 pages 1st Edition
eBook
$35.99
Paperback
$43.99
Subscription
Free Trial
Renews at $19.99p/m
Arrow left icon
Profile Icon Bhargav Srinivasa-Desikan
Arrow right icon
$19.99 per month
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Half star icon Empty star icon 3.6 (7 Ratings)
Paperback Jun 2018 306 pages 1st Edition
eBook
$35.99
Paperback
$43.99
Subscription
Free Trial
Renews at $19.99p/m
eBook
$35.99
Paperback
$43.99
Subscription
Free Trial
Renews at $19.99p/m

What do you get with a Packt Subscription?

Free for first 7 days. $19.99 p/m after that. Cancel any time!
Product feature icon Unlimited ad-free access to the largest independent learning library in tech. Access this title and thousands more!
Product feature icon 50+ new titles added per month, including many first-to-market concepts and exclusive early access to books as they are being written.
Product feature icon Innovative learning tools, including AI book assistants, code context explainers, and text-to-speech.
Product feature icon Thousands of reference materials covering every tech concept you need to stay up to date.
Subscribe now
View plans & pricing
Table of content icon View table of contents Preview book icon Preview Book

Natural Language Processing and Computational Linguistics

Python Tips for Text Analysis

We mentioned in Chapter 1, What is Text Analysis, that we will be using Python throughout the book because it is an easy-to-use and powerful language. In this chapter, we will substantiate these claims, while also providing a revision course in basic Python for text analysis.

Why is this important? While we expect readers of the book to have a background in Python and high-school level math, it is still possible that it's been a while since you've written Python code – and even if you have, the Python code you write during text analysis and string manipulation is quite different from, say, building a website using the web framework Django. Following are the topics we will cover in this chapter:

  • Why Python?
  • Text manipulation in Python

Why Python?

In Python, we re text in the form of string [1], which are objects of the str [2] class. They are an immutable sequence of Unicode code points or characters. It is important to make a careful distinction here, though; in Python 3, all strings are by default Unicode, but in Python 2, the str class is limited to ASCII code, and there is a Unicode class to deal with Unicodes.

Unicode is merely an encoding language or a way we handle text. For example, the Unicode value for the letter Z is U+005A. There are many encoding types, and historically in Python, developers were expected to deal with different encodings on their own, with all the low-level action happening in bytes. In fact, the shift in the way Python handles Unicode has led to a lot of discussions [3], criticism [4], and praise [5] within the community. It also remains an important point of contention when we...

Text manipulation in Python

We mentioned earlier in the chapter that the way we represent text in Python is through strings. So how do we specify that an object is a string?

word = "Bonjour World!"

Now the word variable contains the text, Bonjour World!. Note how we used double quotes around the text that we intend to use - while single quotes also work; if we also wish to use a single quote in our string, we would need to use double quotes. Printing our word is straightforward, where all we need to do is use the print function. Remember to use parentheses if we are coding in Python 3!

print(word)
Bonjour World!

We don't have to use variables to be able to print string though - we can also just do:

print("Bonjour World!")
Bonjour World!

Be careful not to enclose your variable in quotations though! Consider this example:

print("word")
word

This...

Summary

With the knowledge of the functions and strategies we have discussed, our text analysis can be aided; it is often when we are doing large scale text analysis that a small error can lead to completely nonsense results (remember garbage in, garbage out from Chapter 1, What is Text Analysis?).

We finish this mini-chapter with a few useful links on basic text manipulation:

  1. Printing and Manipulating Text [9]: Basic manipulation and printing of text, recommended if interested in how to display text in different ways.
  2. Manipulating Strings [10]: Basic String functions as well as exercises, useful for the further practice of string manipulation.
  3. Manipulating Strings in Python [11]: Similar to the two-preceding links includes a section on escape sequences as well.
  4. Text Processing in Python (book) [12]: Unlike the other links, this is a whole book. It covers the very fundamentals...
Left arrow icon Right arrow icon
Download code icon Download Code

Key benefits

  • • Discover the open source Python text analysis ecosystem, using spaCy, Gensim, scikit-learn, and Keras
  • • Hands-on text analysis with Python, featuring natural language processing and computational linguistics algorithms
  • • Learn deep learning techniques for text analysis

Description

Modern text analysis is now very accessible using Python and open source tools, so discover how you can now perform modern text analysis in this era of textual data. This book shows you how to use natural language processing, and computational linguistics algorithms, to make inferences and gain insights about data you have. These algorithms are based on statistical machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques. The tools to work with these algorithms are available to you right now - with Python, and tools like Gensim and spaCy. You'll start by learning about data cleaning, and then how to perform computational linguistics from first concepts. You're then ready to explore the more sophisticated areas of statistical NLP and deep learning using Python, with realistic language and text samples. You'll learn to tag, parse, and model text using the best tools. You'll gain hands-on knowledge of the best frameworks to use, and you'll know when to choose a tool like Gensim for topic models, and when to work with Keras for deep learning. This book balances theory and practical hands-on examples, so you can learn about and conduct your own natural language processing projects and computational linguistics. You'll discover the rich ecosystem of Python tools you have available to conduct NLP - and enter the interesting world of modern text analysis.

Who is this book for?

This book is for you if you want to dive in, hands-first, into the interesting world of text analysis and NLP, and you're ready to work with the rich Python ecosystem of tools and datasets waiting for you!

What you will learn

  • • Why text analysis is important in our modern age
  • • Understand NLP terminology and get to know the Python tools and datasets
  • • Learn how to pre-process and clean textual data
  • • Convert textual data into vector space representations
  • • Using spaCy to process text
  • • Train your own NLP models for computational linguistics
  • • Use statistical learning and Topic Modeling algorithms for text, using Gensim and scikit-learn
  • • Employ deep learning techniques for text analysis using Keras

Product Details

Country selected
Publication date, Length, Edition, Language, ISBN-13
Publication date : Jun 29, 2018
Length: 306 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781788838535
Category :
Languages :
Tools :

What do you get with a Packt Subscription?

Free for first 7 days. $19.99 p/m after that. Cancel any time!
Product feature icon Unlimited ad-free access to the largest independent learning library in tech. Access this title and thousands more!
Product feature icon 50+ new titles added per month, including many first-to-market concepts and exclusive early access to books as they are being written.
Product feature icon Innovative learning tools, including AI book assistants, code context explainers, and text-to-speech.
Product feature icon Thousands of reference materials covering every tech concept you need to stay up to date.
Subscribe now
View plans & pricing

Product Details

Publication date : Jun 29, 2018
Length: 306 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781788838535
Category :
Languages :
Tools :

Packt Subscriptions

See our plans and pricing
Modal Close icon
$19.99 billed monthly
Feature tick icon Unlimited access to Packt's library of 7,000+ practical books and videos
Feature tick icon Constantly refreshed with 50+ new titles a month
Feature tick icon Exclusive Early access to books as they're written
Feature tick icon Solve problems while you work with advanced search and reference features
Feature tick icon Offline reading on the mobile app
Feature tick icon Simple pricing, no contract
$199.99 billed annually
Feature tick icon Unlimited access to Packt's library of 7,000+ practical books and videos
Feature tick icon Constantly refreshed with 50+ new titles a month
Feature tick icon Exclusive Early access to books as they're written
Feature tick icon Solve problems while you work with advanced search and reference features
Feature tick icon Offline reading on the mobile app
Feature tick icon Choose a DRM-free eBook or Video every month to keep
Feature tick icon PLUS own as many other DRM-free eBooks or Videos as you like for just $5 each
Feature tick icon Exclusive print discounts
$279.99 billed in 18 months
Feature tick icon Unlimited access to Packt's library of 7,000+ practical books and videos
Feature tick icon Constantly refreshed with 50+ new titles a month
Feature tick icon Exclusive Early access to books as they're written
Feature tick icon Solve problems while you work with advanced search and reference features
Feature tick icon Offline reading on the mobile app
Feature tick icon Choose a DRM-free eBook or Video every month to keep
Feature tick icon PLUS own as many other DRM-free eBooks or Videos as you like for just $5 each
Feature tick icon Exclusive print discounts

Frequently bought together


Stars icon
Total $ 131.97
Hands-On Natural Language Processing with Python
$43.99
Natural Language Processing with TensorFlow
$43.99
Natural Language Processing and Computational Linguistics
$43.99
Total $ 131.97 Stars icon

Table of Contents

16 Chapters
What is Text Analysis? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Python Tips for Text Analysis Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
spaCy's Language Models Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Gensim – Vectorizing Text and Transformations and n-grams Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
POS-Tagging and Its Applications Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
NER-Tagging and Its Applications Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Dependency Parsing Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Topic Models Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Advanced Topic Modeling Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Clustering and Classifying Text Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Similarity Queries and Summarization Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Word2Vec, Doc2Vec, and Gensim Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Deep Learning for Text Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Keras and spaCy for Deep Learning Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Sentiment Analysis and ChatBots Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Other Books You May Enjoy Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Customer reviews

Top Reviews
Rating distribution
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Half star icon Empty star icon 3.6
(7 Ratings)
5 star 42.9%
4 star 14.3%
3 star 14.3%
2 star 14.3%
1 star 14.3%
Filter icon Filter
Top Reviews

Filter reviews by




David Baron Aug 28, 2018
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
15 chapters of fast-paced learning - the author gives you the bootstrapped resources for success with NLP. Every concept is explained clearly and with powerful examples and analogies. Increasingly complex concepts are stacked upon each other to produce a comprehensive overview of everything in NLP, from linguistics-based methods to bag-of-words approaches, from k-means clustering and LDA models to the inevitable methods of deep learning. Highly recommended.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
TM Raghavan Aug 17, 2018
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
What I liked about this book is its style of delivery, an easy read one. As it states in the beginning, though fluency in Python or NLP concepts is better to make full use of the ideas, it still contains lots of code examples and analysis of their results, like any good book on this genre. The breadth and and the depth from the coverage of the book's focus are sufficient in my opinion.What I find missing in the book is a section on Glossary, encompassing statistics, vector /matrix algebra, NLP/IR, ANN (CNN/RNN), that are relevant to the readers' requirements. Perhaps this can be given in the beginning itself (like a Forward).Overall I find the book very useful for the students of final year Under-Graduate and Graduate programs besides researchers whose foci are outside of basic NLP but would want to analyse large texts for their research.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Juan Oct 08, 2018
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
Great book, up to date, engaging and covers a lot of topics clearly.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Victor Aug 27, 2018
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon 4
Although the introduction states that is necessary be fluent in Python, this book is feasible for anyone who has just a basic understanding of Python or any other programming language. The book describes profoundly all the steps of a NLP analysis, setting comprehensible examples that allows the reader to understand every aspect of NLP. I would consider this book as an advanced and complete introduction, recommended to anyone who wants to begin and follow further on the topic but getting a solid base from this book. I would recommend it.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Itai Aug 14, 2018
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon 3
Writing is a profession. Even excellent engineers may be bad writers, this is exactly what happens here.Super long sentences on trivial topics, and then just a taste from the really important stuff.For example: having several full pages on 1st grade stuff as "lower(), upper(), isNumeric()", having several pages on word2Vec King-man+woman = queen, and then have only a few lines about Doc2Vec which is the most important thing.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Get free access to Packt library with over 7500+ books and video courses for 7 days!
Start Free Trial

FAQs

What is included in a Packt subscription? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

A subscription provides you with full access to view all Packt and licnesed content online, this includes exclusive access to Early Access titles. Depending on the tier chosen you can also earn credits and discounts to use for owning content

How can I cancel my subscription? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

To cancel your subscription with us simply go to the account page - found in the top right of the page or at https://subscription.packtpub.com/my-account/subscription - From here you will see the ‘cancel subscription’ button in the grey box with your subscription information in.

What are credits? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Credits can be earned from reading 40 section of any title within the payment cycle - a month starting from the day of subscription payment. You also earn a Credit every month if you subscribe to our annual or 18 month plans. Credits can be used to buy books DRM free, the same way that you would pay for a book. Your credits can be found in the subscription homepage - subscription.packtpub.com - clicking on ‘the my’ library dropdown and selecting ‘credits’.

What happens if an Early Access Course is cancelled? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Projects are rarely cancelled, but sometimes it's unavoidable. If an Early Access course is cancelled or excessively delayed, you can exchange your purchase for another course. For further details, please contact us here.

Where can I send feedback about an Early Access title? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

If you have any feedback about the product you're reading, or Early Access in general, then please fill out a contact form here and we'll make sure the feedback gets to the right team. 

Can I download the code files for Early Access titles? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

We try to ensure that all books in Early Access have code available to use, download, and fork on GitHub. This helps us be more agile in the development of the book, and helps keep the often changing code base of new versions and new technologies as up to date as possible. Unfortunately, however, there will be rare cases when it is not possible for us to have downloadable code samples available until publication.

When we publish the book, the code files will also be available to download from the Packt website.

How accurate is the publication date? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

The publication date is as accurate as we can be at any point in the project. Unfortunately, delays can happen. Often those delays are out of our control, such as changes to the technology code base or delays in the tech release. We do our best to give you an accurate estimate of the publication date at any given time, and as more chapters are delivered, the more accurate the delivery date will become.

How will I know when new chapters are ready? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

We'll let you know every time there has been an update to a course that you've bought in Early Access. You'll get an email to let you know there has been a new chapter, or a change to a previous chapter. The new chapters are automatically added to your account, so you can also check back there any time you're ready and download or read them online.

I am a Packt subscriber, do I get Early Access? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Yes, all Early Access content is fully available through your subscription. You will need to have a paid for or active trial subscription in order to access all titles.

How is Early Access delivered? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Early Access is currently only available as a PDF or through our online reader. As we make changes or add new chapters, the files in your Packt account will be updated so you can download them again or view them online immediately.

How do I buy Early Access content? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Early Access is a way of us getting our content to you quicker, but the method of buying the Early Access course is still the same. Just find the course you want to buy, go through the check-out steps, and you’ll get a confirmation email from us with information and a link to the relevant Early Access courses.

What is Early Access? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Keeping up to date with the latest technology is difficult; new versions, new frameworks, new techniques. This feature gives you a head-start to our content, as it's being created. With Early Access you'll receive each chapter as it's written, and get regular updates throughout the product's development, as well as the final course as soon as it's ready.We created Early Access as a means of giving you the information you need, as soon as it's available. As we go through the process of developing a course, 99% of it can be ready but we can't publish until that last 1% falls in to place. Early Access helps to unlock the potential of our content early, to help you start your learning when you need it most. You not only get access to every chapter as it's delivered, edited, and updated, but you'll also get the finalized, DRM-free product to download in any format you want when it's published. As a member of Packt, you'll also be eligible for our exclusive offers, including a free course every day, and discounts on new and popular titles.