pyglottolog 1.5.0

python package for glottolog data curation

pyglottolog

Programmatic access to Glottolog data.

Install

To install pyglottolog you need a python installation on your system, running python 2.7 or >3.4. Run

pip install pyglottolog

This will also install the command line interface glottolog.

Note: To make use of pyglottolog you also need a local copy of the Glottolog data. This can be

• a clone of the clld/glottolog repository or your fork of it,
• an unzipped released version of Glottolog from GitHub,
• or an unzipped download of a released version of Glottolog from ZENODO.

Make sure you remember where this local copy of the data is located - you always have to pass this location as argument when using pyglottolog.

Python API

Glottolog data can also be accessed programmatically from within python programs. All functionality is mediated through an instance of pyglottolog.api.Glottolog, e.g.

>>> from pyglottolog.api import Glottolog
>>> api = Glottolog('.')
>>> print(api)
<Glottolog repos v0.2-259-g27ac0ef at /.../glottolog>

Accessing languoid data

>>> api.languoid('stan1295')
<Language stan1295>
>>> print(api.languoid('stan1295'))
German [stan1295]

Accessing reference data

>>> print(api.bibfiles['hh.bib']['s:Karang:Tati-Harzani'])
@book{s:Karang:Tati-Harzani,
    author = {'Abd-al-'Ali Kārang},
    title = {Tāti va Harzani},
    publisher = {Tabriz: Tabriz University Press},
    address = {Tabriz},
    pages = {6+160},
    year = {1334 [1953]},
    glottolog_ref_id = {41999},
    hhtype = {grammar_sketch},
    inlg = {Farsi [pes]},
    lgcode = {Harzani [hrz]},
    macro_area = {Eurasia}
}

Command line interface

Command line functionality is implemented via sub-commands of glottolog. The list of available sub-commands can be inspected running

$ glottolog --help
usage: glottolog [-h] [--verbosity VERBOSITY] [--log-level LOG_LEVEL]
                 [--repos REPOS]
                 command ...

Main command line interface of the pyglottolog package.

positional arguments:
  command               isobib | show | edit | create | bib | tree | newick |
                        index | check | metadata | refsearch | refindex |
                        langsearch | langindex | tree2lff | lff2tree
  args

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --verbosity VERBOSITY
                        increase output verbosity
  --log-level LOG_LEVEL
                        log level [ERROR|WARN|INFO|DEBUG]
  --repos REPOS         path to glottolog data repository

Use 'glottolog help <cmd>' to get help about individual commands.

Note: The location of your local clone or export of the Glottolog data should be passed as --repos=PATH/TO/glottolog.

Extracting languoid data

Glottolog data is often integrated with other data or incorporated as reference data in tools, e.g. as LanguageTable in a CLDF dataset.

To make this easier, pyglottolog provides the languoids subcommand, which dumps basic languoid data into a CSVW file with accompanying metadata:

glottolog --repos=PATH/TO/glottolog languoids [--output=OUTDIR] [--version=VERSION]

This will create a CSVW package, i.e.

• a CSV table glottolog-languoids-VERSION.csv
• and a JSON description glottolog-languoids-VERSION.csv-metadata.json

where VERSION is the result of running git describe on the data repository, or the version string passed as--version=VERSION in case you are running the command on an export of the repository or a download from ZENODO.