A contribution to NaNoGenMo 2018
The code for this project attempts to generate a text in French with rhymed couplets of Alexandrines using the Théâtre Classique's online collection of French plays from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries.
Here's the procedure:
- Scrape the links for all the XML files of the plays from this page and then download them to build a corpus.
- Make a vector space for all words in the corpus using Gensim's Word2Vec module. The words are lemmatized using SpaCy to simplify the vector space.
- Build a tf-idf matrix for all the verses in all the plays in the corpus.
- Choose a pair of words to form the basis of an analogy (femme and homme, for instance). The pair will enable a modification of a verse by replacing words according to the analogy (roi is to homme as reine is to femme).
- Select a random verse from the corpus and remove it from the corpus.
- Modify the verse with word substitutions based on the vector space.
- Construct a tf-idf vector for the modified verse based on the matrix for the whole corpus.
- Find a verse in the corpus that is most similar to the modified verse using cosine similarity. The verse should follow the pattern aa bb cc dd ... where the rhymes alternate between feminine (the last word of the verse ending in a silent e) and masculine (the last word ending in some other letter). The epitran module is useful for transliterating text into IPA, although it is imperfect (as its authors acknowledge) because the relationship between word spellings and phonetics in French is complicated.
- Return to step 6 with the selected verse and continue until the generated text contains at least 50,000 words.
Here are the first lines of the generated text:
1 Par ses déportements ores blanche ores brune : (MONTCHRETIEN_CARTHAGINOISE.xml:1254)
2 Qui veut faire le mal quand il peut faire mieux. (MONTCHRETIEN_CARTHAGINOISE.xml:1256)
3 Du jugement : mais, qu'il faut de science ! (LAFOSSEM_ECOLEDELARAISON.xml:564)
4 Si tu gardes encor la même violence, (CORNEILLEP_VEUVE.xml:980)
5 J'afflige le meilleur, le plus tendre des pères. (SAURIN_BLANCHEETGUISCARD.xml:618)
6 Quelles grâces vous tendre, adorable Bergère ? (DONNEAUDEVISE_DELIE.xml:1126)
7 Le soleil en ce jour n'eût pas luit pour mes yeux. (SAINTAIGNAN_MORTLOUISXVI.xml:646)
8 Et le dernier moment est le plus ennuyeux. (BOURSAULT_GERMANICUS.xml:146)
9 Du moins je le souffrais en qualité d'Amant. (CORNEILLET_INCONNU.xml:593)
10 Arrête un peu le cours de cette médisance, (LACALPRENEDE_COMTEDESSEX.xml:1422)
11 Seigneur. Je n'entends plus tes étranges maximes, (LEVAYER_GRANDSELIM.xml:1399)
12 Je quitte Briseis, tu vas m'en faire un crime. (CORNEILLET_MORTDACHILLE.xml:390)
13 Quoi ! Vous feriez cet illustre Molière, (IMBERT_POINSINETMOLIERE.xml:1)
14 J'en parle sans humeur, vous le sentez, mon père ; (CHABANON_FAUXNOBLE.xml:435)
At the end of each verse is a reference to its source text and line number.