ipa-cluster

Cluster words with similar IPA transcriptions together.

Similar, in this context, means that the edit distance of the IPA transcriptions is small enough. The Levenshtein distance is used to measure this distance.

Installation

npm install @palasimi/ipa-cluster

Basic example

import { clusterByIPA } from "@palasimi/ipa-cluster";

// The IPA transcriptions should be tokenized.
const dataset = [{ ipa: "f uː" }, { ipa: "b ɑː r" }, { ipa: "b ɑː z" }];

// Produces one cluster for [fuː] and another for [bɑːr] and [bɑːz].
const clusters = clusterByIPA(dataset);

Equivalent sounds

By default, the algorithm matches two IPA segments if and only if their string representations are the same. It is possible to override this behavior by specifying a set of "equivalent sounds." Here's an example.

a ~ o
b ~ p

Normally, the algorithm would consider [a] and [o] to be a mismatch, but by including the first rule, the algorithm will treat [a] and [o] as equivalent.

const options = {
  ignores: `
        a ~ o
        b ~ p
    `,
};
const clusters = clusterByIPA(dataset, options);

It is called ignores, because it specifies which edits/sound changes the algorithm should "ignore".

Environments

You may define sounds to only be equivalent in specific environments.

-- This is a comment.
-- Treat [b] and [p] as equivalent only at the end of a word.
b ~ p / _ #

-- Treat [b] and [v] as equivalent when surrounded by [a]s.
b ~ v / a _ a

Sound classes

Consider the following set of rules.

q ~ g
q ~ h
q ~ k
q ~ x
g ~ h
g ~ k
g ~ x
h ~ k
h ~ x
k ~ x

It says that [q], [g], [h], [k] and [x] should all be considered equivalent to each other. Sound classes make it possible to define rules like this in a more concise manner. The following expands to the ruleset above.

{ q g h k x } ~ { q g h k x }

-- Or:
A = { q g h k x }
A ~ A

-- Note that variable names should be capitalized.

Classes can also be used in environments.

A = { a e i o u y }
s ~ z / # _ A

License

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/.