Using regex to match quotation parts across tab-spaced text

[Christoph Ruehlemann]

Hi,

I have story transcripts such as this one with quote marks around coherent pieces of direct speech:

> story

                                                                   V1
1 Mim:\ty’ know how teachers go “E::wawawawawu” (’n tha’ sor’ o’ th’)
2                           \tso I say, I sa’, when you meet anybody
3                            \tand they say to him “how's teaching?”
4                                                    \t“Re::wawawawu”
5                                                \tI say “J’s STOp it
6                                  Ter:\tHheh heh heh [heh    he  he]
7                 Mim:\t\t     [you’re really] actually enjoying it”
8                                        \t[(so I say “don't do it”)]

Using regex I want to extract all instances of direct speech wrapped into left quote marks “ and right quite marks ”.

This regex does extract all direct speech that's within a single line:

pattern <- "“[^”]*”" #
matches <- gregexpr(pattern, story$V1)
quotes <- regmatches(story$V1, matches)
quotes <- unlist(quotes)

quotes
[1] "“E::wawawawawu”"   "“how's teaching?”" "“Re::wawawawu”"    "“don't do it”"

It fails to match, however, the direct speech spread from line 5-7 (“J’s STOp it ... [you’re really] actually enjoying it”)

I've tried to include \t as an optional element, thus:

pattern <- "“((\\t{1,})?)[^”]*”"

But that finds the same as the above regex.

Can anybody help?

Thanks in advance!

Best

Chris

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https://www.uni-marburg.de/fb10/iaa/institut/personal/ruehlemann

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[Stefan Th. Gries]

If you read the story in line by line (sep="\n"), the regex will of
course not go across vector elements to find the beginning double
quote in line 5 (“J’s STOp it), everything in line 6, and then the end
of the direct speech part in line 7 (Mim:\t\t [you’re really]
actually enjoying it”). In other words, the tab has nothing to do with
it, it's that regexes won't search across vector elements. One way to
address this is to paste together the story into one string.

[Bob Green]

Hello,

Does anyone know of sources of autobiographical texts of famous/well
known people in a format suitable for text analysis?

Any assistance is appreciated,

Bob

[Christoph Ruehlemann]

Thanks, worked!

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https://www.uni-marburg.de/fb10/iaa/institut/personal/ruehlemann

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