[RFC]: Improvements to @stdlib/nlp-expand-contractions

[titanism]

Description

We're writing as we found your library to be the most tested and fastest for expanding contractions. For context, we're working on https://spamscanner.net and expanding contractions before passing to tokenizers for spam classification.

To clarify, this is with regards to the generated codebase https://github.com/stdlib-js/nlp-expand-contractions from the source at https://github.com/stdlib-js/stdlib/tree/develop/lib/node_modules/%40stdlib/nlp/expand-contractions.

We noticed that your library is missing quite a few contractions in English, and could also benefit from contractions from other languages too (perhaps with an option).

While we can open a PR, we wanted to check to see what your thoughts were on this and how you might want the PR to look like (integration wise; e.g. new options?).

Here is our current compiled list of research and findings:

• List of contractions research
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_English_contractions
  • https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:English_double_contractions
  • https://gist.github.com/loretoparisi/c221a9c55fb71a23ff4e7bba3b794425?permalink_comment_id=4198425
  • https://www.enchantedlearning.com/grammar/contractions/
  • https://github.com/NaturalNode/natural/issues/533
  • https://github.com/anton-bot/expand-contractions/pull/1
  • https://github.com/kootenpv/contractions/blob/master/contractions/data/leftovers_dict.json
  • https://github.com/kootenpv/contractions/blob/master/contractions/data/slang_dict.json
  • https://github.com/stdlib-js/nlp-expand-contractions/blob/main/lib/contractions.json
  • https://github.com/stdlib-js/nlp-expand-contractions/blob/main/lib/expand_contractions.js
  • https://github.com/textlint-rule/textlint-rule-preset-google/blob/master/packages/textlint-rule-google-contractions/src/textlint-rule-google-contractions.js#L67-L87
  • https://web.library.yale.edu/cataloging/months
  • https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?search=%2B%22Category%3A%22+%2B%22contractions%22&title=Special:Search&profile=advanced&fulltext=1&ns0=1&ns120=1
  • There are so many other lists that we can scrape:
    • For example, French contractions: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:French_contractions
• Here are other contractions we think should be included (that were not found elsewhere)
  • 'twas -> it was
  • 'tisn't -> it is not
  • ma'am -> madam
  • mightn't've -> might not have
  • mustn't've -> must not have
  • ne'er-do-well -> never do well
  • o' -> of
  • o'clock -> of the clock
  • she'd've -> she would have
  • shouldn't've -> should not have
  • wouldn't've -> would not have

Related Issues

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Questions

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Checklist

• [X] I have read and understood the Code of Conduct.
• [X] Searched for existing issues and pull requests.
• [X] The issue name begins with RFC:.

[github-actions[bot]]

:tada: Welcome! :tada:

And thank you for opening your first issue! We will get back to you shortly. :runner: :dash:

[titanism]

Doing a review and will submit a PR to contractions.json with changes.

Caught some interesting bugs like "what's": "what has/is", in the JSON (which is obviously a bug).

The other question I wanted to raise is that we should probably handle ’ and ‘ and ’ interchangeably somehow.

[kgryte]

Re: missing contractions. Some of the entries in your list are already present in the contractions file. E.g., wouldn't've, mightn't've.

[kgryte]

@Planeshifter Is there a reason for the what has/is entry?

[kgryte]

Re: fancy apostrophe. That should be possible to handle in the @stdlib/nlp/tokenize package.

[titanism]

I'm about to submit a PR, one moment @kgryte

[titanism]

See https://github.com/stdlib-js/stdlib/pull/497

cc @kgryte

[kgryte]

@titanism One recent update: @Planeshifter added initial support for expanding acronyms (see https://github.com/stdlib-js/stdlib/tree/c624a5eb4bca8f4f3d45e01bcc4eeee41652e3ba/lib/node_modules/%40stdlib/nlp/expand-acronyms). This may help to avoid mixing contraction/acronym concerns.