W02 Prove Milestone: Writing Functions
Purpose
Prove that you can write functions with parameters and call those functions multiple times with arguments.
Problem Statement
The Turing test, named after Alan Turing, is a test of a computer’s ability to make conversation that is indistinguishable from human conversation. A computer that could pass the Turing test would need to understand sentences typed by a human and respond with sentences that make sense.
In English and many other languages, grammatical quantity (also known as grammatical number) is an attribute of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and verbs that expresses count distinctions, such as “one”, “two”, “some”, or “many”. The grammatical quantity of the words in a sentence must match. In English, there are two categories of grammatical quantity: single and plural. For example, here are three English sentences that contain single nouns, pronouns, and verbs:
The boy laughs.
One dog eats.
She drinks water.
Here are three English sentences that contain plural nouns, pronouns, and verbs:
Two birds fly.
Some animals eat.
Many cars drive.
Grammatical tense is an attribute of verbs that expresses when an action happened. Many languages include past, present, and future tenses. For example, here are three English sentences, the first with past tense, the second with present tense, and the third with future tense:
The cat walked.
The cat walks.
The cat will walk.
Assignment
Write a Python program named sentences.py
that
generates simple English sentences. During this prove milestone, you
will write functions that generate sentences with three parts:
-
a determiner (sometimes known as an article)
-
a noun
-
a verb
For example:
A cat laughed.
One man eats.
The woman will think.
Some girls thought.
Many dogs run.
Many men will write.
For this milestone, your program must include at least these five functions:
-
main
-
make_sentence
-
get_determiner
-
get_noun
-
get_verb
You may add other functions if you want. The functions
get_determiner
, get_noun
, and
get_verb
, must randomly choose a word from a list of
words and return the randomly chosen word. All the functions that
you must write for this milestone assignment are described in the
Steps section below.
Helpful Documentation
-
In CSE 110, you studied Python lists. You should recall that we create a Python list with square brackets and commas like this list of strings:
# Create a list of strings and assign # the list to a variable named words. words = ["boy", "girl", "cat", "dog", "bird", "house"]
-
The preparation content for the previous lesson explains how to call functions.
-
The preparation content for this lesson explains how to write functions.
-
The standard Python
random
module includes afunction named choice
that randomly chooses one element from a list and returns that element. The choice function is easy to call like this:import random # Create a list of strings and assign # the list to a variable named words. words = ["boy", "girl", "cat", "dog", "bird", "house"] # Call the random.choice function which will choose # one string from the words list. Store the chosen # string in a variable named word. word = random.choice(words)
-
The Python str.capitalize method will capitalize the first letter in a word. The capitalize method is easy to call like this:
# This could be any word from any source. word = "horse" # Call the capitalize method which will # capitalize the first letter of the word. cap_word = word.capitalize()
-
In Python, it is easy to use an f-string to combine many strings into one large string like this:
given = "Michelle" middle = "Aya" surname = "Takechi" full_name = f"{given} {middle} {surname}"
Steps
Do the following:
-
Using VS Code, create a new file, import the
random
module at the top of the file, and save the file assentences.py
-
Copy and paste the following
get_determiner
function into your program.def get_determiner(quantity): """Return a randomly chosen determiner. A determiner is a word like "the", "a", "one", "some", "many". If quantity is 1, this function will return either "a", "one", or "the". Otherwise this function will return either "some", "many", or "the". Parameter quantity: an integer. If quantity is 1, this function will return a determiner for a single noun. Otherwise this function will return a determiner for a plural noun. Return: a randomly chosen determiner. """ if quantity == 1: words = ["a", "one", "the"] else: words = ["some", "many", "the"] # Randomly choose and return a determiner. word = random.choice(words) return word
-
Use the
get_determiner
function as an example to help you write theget_noun
function. Theget_noun
function must have the following header and fulfill the requirements of the following documentation string.def get_noun(quantity): """Return a randomly chosen noun. If quantity is 1, this function will return one of these ten single nouns: "bird", "boy", "car", "cat", "child", "dog", "girl", "man", "rabbit", "woman" Otherwise, this function will return one of these ten plural nouns: "birds", "boys", "cars", "cats", "children", "dogs", "girls", "men", "rabbits", "women" Parameter quantity: an integer that determines if the returned noun is single or plural. Return: a randomly chosen noun. """
-
Use the
get_determiner
function as an example to help you write theget_verb
function. Theget_verb
function must have the following header and fulfill the requirements of the following documentation string.def get_verb(quantity, tense): """Return a randomly chosen verb. If tense is "past", this function will return one of these ten verbs: "drank", "ate", "grew", "laughed", "thought", "ran", "slept", "talked", "walked", "wrote" If tense is "present" and quantity is 1, this function will return one of these ten verbs: "drinks", "eats", "grows", "laughs", "thinks", "runs", "sleeps", "talks", "walks", "writes" If tense is "present" and quantity is NOT 1, this function will return one of these ten verbs: "drink", "eat", "grow", "laugh", "think", "run", "sleep", "talk", "walk", "write" If tense is "future", this function will return one of these ten verbs: "will drink", "will eat", "will grow", "will laugh", "will think", "will run", "will sleep", "will talk", "will walk", "will write" Parameters quantity: an integer that determines if the returned verb is single or plural. tense: a string that determines the verb conjugation, either "past", "present" or "future". Return: a randomly chosen verb. """
-
Write a function named
make_sentence
with the following header and documentation string. Yourmake_sentence
function must call yourget_determiner
,get_noun
, andget_verb
function once each and build and return a sentence. Yourmake_sentence
function must capitalize the first letter of the sentence and end it with a period (.).def make_sentence(quantity, tense): """Build and return a sentence with three words: a determiner, a noun, and a verb. The grammatical quantity of the determiner and noun will match the number in the quantity parameter. The grammatical quantity and tense of the verb will match the number and tense in the quantity and tense parameters. """
-
Write the
main
function to call yourmake_sentence
function six times and print six sentences with these characteristics:Quantity Verb Tense a. single past b. single present c. single future d. plural past e. plural present f. plural future -
At the bottom of your
sentences.py
file, write a call to yourmain
function as explained in this lesson’s preparation content in the section titled Themain
User-Defined Function.
Call Graph
The following call graph shows the user-defined functions and
function calls and returns as you should write them in your
sentences.py
program. From this call graph we see the
following function calls:
-
The computer starts executing the
sentences.py
program by calling themain
function. -
While executing the
main
function, the computer calls themake_sentence
function. -
While executing the
make_sentence
function, the computer calls theget_determiner
,get_noun
, andget_verb
functions. -
While executing each of the
get_determiner
,get_noun
, andget_verb
functions, the computer calls therandom.choice
function. -
Then, the computer executes the
str.capitalize
method. -
Finally, the computer executes the
print
function.
Testing Procedure
Verify that your test program works correctly by following each step in this procedure:
-
Run your
sentences.py
program and ensure that your program outputs six sentences with the following characteristics:Quantity Verb Tense a. single past b. single present c. single future d. plural past e. plural present f. plural future > python sentences.py The cat laughed. Some girls thought. One man eats. Many dogs run. The woman will think. Many men will write.
Ponder
During this assignment, you wrote five functions named
main
, make_sentence
,
get_determiner
, get_noun
, and
get_verb
. The main
function is not easily
reusable in another program because it prints to the terminal
window. However, the make_sentence
,
get_determiner
, get_noun
, and
get_verb
functions are easily reusable in another
program because each one gets input from its parameters and returns
a value and does not get input from a user and does not print
anything.
Submission
On or before the due date, return to Canvas and report your progress on this milestone.
Up Next
- W02 Prove: Sentences
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