maimouna-mbacke/wolof-text-analysis

Computational frequency analysis of Wolof translation of the book: "The Little Prince". # Wolof Text Frequency Analysis A Python-based corpus linguistics project analyzing the Wolof translation of "The Little Prince" (*Ndoomu Buur Si*). ## Project Overview This project performs computational linguistic analysis on a complete Wolof literary text, extracting word frequencies and statistical patterns to understand language structure and thematic elements. **Corpus Size:** 13,557 words | **Unique Words:** 1,864 | **Type-Token Ratio:** 13.7% ## Key Features - Text Cleaning and Normalization: Removes punctuation, numbers, and formatting artifacts while preserving Wolof diacritics - Frequency Analysis: Counts and ranks all words in the corpus - Statistical Reporting: Generates comprehensive reports with percentages and rankings - Unicode Support: Proper handling of Wolof special characters (ë, ñ, ó, etc.) ## Linguistic Insights ### Top 10 Most Frequent Words | Rank | Word | Count | Percentage | Type | |------|------|-------|------------|------| | 1 | ci | 390 | 2.88% | Locative preposition ("in/at") | | 2 | ne | 324 | 2.39% | Quotative marker ("said/that") | | 3 | ko | 308 | 2.27% | Object pronoun ("him/her/it") | | 4 | ma | 288 | 2.12% | First person pronoun ("I/me") | | 5 | mu | 285 | 2.10% | Subject pronoun ("he/she") | | 6 | bi | 263 | 1.94% | Definite article | | 7 | si | 216 | 1.59% | Definite article | | 8 | **buur** | 211 | 1.56% | **"king"** (thematic marker) | | 9 | ak | 204 | 1.50% | Conjunction ("and/with") | | 10 | la | 189 | 1.39% | Focus marker | ### Key Finding The word **"buur"** (king) appears 211 times, making it the 8th most frequent word and the most frequent content word. This validates the narrative's central theme of power, authority, and leadership throughout *The Little Prince*. ### Morphological Insight: Compound Title Construction The protagonist "le petit prince" is rendered as **ndoomu buur si**: - **ndoomu** = little child of (n-doom-u: diminutive + possessive) - **buur** = king (211 occurrences, rank 8) - **si** = …