Finding head of a noun phrase in NLTK and stanford parse according to the rules of finding head of a NP

Question

generally A head of a nounphrase is a noun which is rightmost of the NP as shown below tree is the head of the parent NP. So

            ROOT                                  


        

Answer 1

There are built-in string to Tree object in NLTK (http://www.nltk.org/_modules/nltk/tree.html), see https://github.com/nltk/nltk/blob/develop/nltk/tree.py#L541.

>>> from nltk.tree import Tree
>>> parsestr='(ROOT (S (NP (NP (DT The) (JJ old) (NN oak) (NN tree)) (PP (IN from) (NP (NNP India)))) (VP (VBD fell) (PRT (RP down)))))'
>>> for i in Tree.fromstring(parsestr).subtrees():
...     if i.label() == 'NP':
...             print i
... 
(NP
  (NP (DT The) (JJ old) (NN oak) (NN tree))
  (PP (IN from) (NP (NNP India))))
(NP (DT The) (JJ old) (NN oak) (NN tree))
(NP (NNP India))


>>> for i in Tree.fromstring(parsestr).subtrees():
...     if i.label() == 'NP':
...             print i.leaves()
... 
['The', 'old', 'oak', 'tree', 'from', 'India']
['The', 'old', 'oak', 'tree']
['India']

Note that it's not always the case that right most noun is the head noun of an NP, e.g.

>>> s = '(ROOT (S (NP (NN Carnac) (DT the) (NN Magnificent)) (VP (VBD gave) (NP ((DT a) (NN talk))))))'
>>> Tree.fromstring(s)
Tree('ROOT', [Tree('S', [Tree('NP', [Tree('NN', ['Carnac']), Tree('DT', ['the']), Tree('NN', ['Magnificent'])]), Tree('VP', [Tree('VBD', ['gave']), Tree('NP', [Tree('', [Tree('DT', ['a']), Tree('NN', ['talk'])])])])])])
>>> for i in Tree.fromstring(s).subtrees():
...     if i.label() == 'NP':
...             print i.leaves()[-1]
... 
Magnificent
talk

Arguably, Magnificent can still be the head noun. Another example is when the NP includes a relative clause:

(NP (NP the person) that gave (NP the talk)) went home

The head noun of the subject is person but the last leave node of the NP the person that gave the talk is talk.