pointofview

A Python package for determining a piece of text's point of view (first, second, third, or unknown).

Installation

pointofview is available on PyPI. Simply install it with pip:

pip install pointofview

You can also install it from source:

$ git clone https://github.com/prosegrinder/python-pointofview.git
Cloning into 'python-pointofview'...
...

$ cd python-pointofview
$ python setup.py install
...

Usage

pointofview guesses a text's point of view by counting point of view pronouns. The main function get_text_pov() will return 'first', 'second', 'third', or null (Python's None object):

>>> import pointofview
>>> text = "I'm a piece of text written in first person! What are you?"
>>> pointofview.get_text_pov(text)
'first'

There are two other helper functions as well.

get_word_pov() returns the point of view of a single word:

>>> pointofview.get_word_pov("I")
'first'
>>> pointofview.get_word_pov("nope")
None

parse_pov_words() returns a dict containing all first-, second-, and third-person point-of-view words:

>>> text = """
... When I try to analyze my own cravings, motives, actions and so forth, I surrender to a sort of retrospective imagination which feeds the analytic faculty with boundless alternatives and which causes each visualized route to fork and re-fork without end in the maddeningly complex prospect of my past.
... """
>>> pointofview.parse_pov_words(text)
{'first': ['i', 'i'], 'second': [], 'third': []}