Here's an example of counting defined sets of "words" (which can be tricky to define) based on the technique described in the Building Regex Alternations Dynamically article by haukex. If you can figure out how to get the contents of your positive and negative word data files into the corresponding arrays (and if my notion of what you want is anywhere near what you actually want), you may be on your way.

Note that the code is set up for case-insensitive matching and counting: the negative word "fourscore" matches "FoUrScOrE" in the example sentence, and so on. Note, again, that the concept of a "word" can be slippery, so the use of the  \b boundary assertion, among other details, may not be appropriate.

c:\@Work\Perl\monks>perl -wMstrict -MData::Dump -le
"my @positive = qw(nation conceived liberty created equal foo);
 my @negative = qw(fourscore SEVEN fOrTh fathers continent bar);
 ;;
 my $sentence = 'FoUrScOrE and seven years ago '
              . 'our fathers brought forth, on this continent, '
              . 'a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated '
              . 'to the proposition that all men are created equal. '
              . 'Repeat seven nation fathers nation.'
              ;
 ;;
 my %pos = map { lc($_) => 0 } @positive;
 my $rx_pos = make_regex(\%pos);
 print 'for debug: positive rx: ', $rx_pos;
 ;;
 my %neg = map { lc($_) => 0 } @negative;
 my $rx_neg = make_regex(\%neg);
 print 'for debug: negative rx: ', $rx_neg;
 ;;
 my %other;
 my $rx_undefined = qr{ (?! $rx_pos | $rx_neg) }xms;
 my $rx_word      = qr{ \b [[:alpha:]]+ \b }xms;
 ;;
 ++$pos  { lc $_ } for $sentence =~ m{ $rx_pos }xmsg;
 ++$neg  { lc $_ } for $sentence =~ m{ $rx_neg }xmsg;
 ++$other{ lc $_ } for $sentence =~ m{ $rx_undefined $rx_word }xmsg;
 ;;
 dd \%pos;
 dd \%neg;
 dd \%other;
 ;;
 ;;
 sub make_regex {
   my ($hr_wordlist) = @_;
   ;;
   my ($rx) =
     map  qr{ (?i) \b (?: $_) \b }xms,
     join '|',
     map  quotemeta,
     reverse sort
     keys %$hr_wordlist
     ;
   ;;
   return $rx;
   }
"
for debug: positive rx: (?msx-i: (?i) \b (?: nation|liberty|foo|equal|
+created|conceived) \b )
for debug: negative rx: (?msx-i: (?i) \b (?: seven|fourscore|forth|fat
+hers|continent|bar) \b )
{ conceived => 1, created => 1, equal => 1, foo => 0, liberty => 1, na
+tion => 3 }

{ bar => 0, continent => 1, fathers => 2, forth => 1, fourscore => 1, 
+seven => 2 }

{
  a           => 1,
  ago         => 1,
  all         => 1,
  "and"       => 2,
  are         => 1,
  brought     => 1,
  dedicated   => 1,
  in          => 1,
  men         => 1,
  new         => 1,
  on          => 1,
  our         => 1,
  proposition => 1,
  repeat      => 1,
  that        => 1,
  the         => 1,
  this        => 1,
  to          => 1,
  years       => 1,
}
[download]

Update: In the  make_regex() function, the lines
    reverse sort
    map  quotemeta,
are swapped | were swapped (fixed); they should be
    map  quotemeta,
    reverse sort
i.e., sort-ing, either lexically or by length, should be done on the raw strings before the quotemeta step.

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