Essential Python for Corpus Linguistics

Linguistic research increasingly relies on large electronic corpora for its primary data. While off-the-shelf programs can perform a set of standard searches, specialized questions usually require a custom-written program to find their answers. Essential Python for Corpus Linguistics uses the programming language Python to explain how to write simple programs that extract linguistically useful information, such as the frequency of a given utterance in a particular context within a corpus, or instances of certain phrasal structures in a Treebank. Assuming no prior programming background, the book provides numerous example programs that search for phonological, morphological and syntactic constructions in corpora, and the associated web site provides sample data and programs, which make it easy to start working independently. This book is a valuable resource for linguists who use corpus methods but have no programming training.

I. Introduction II. Getting Started bull;Downloading and Installing Python bull;Checking that it Works bull;Using Python as a Calculator bull;String bull;Lists bull;Variables and Assignment Statements bull;Counting Lines and Words bull;Exercises III. More on Sequences bull;Tuples bull;Operations on Sequences bull;List Operations bull;String Operations IV. Tests and Control bull;Equality comparison and membership tests bull;The IF statement bull;The FOR statement bull;Example programs bull;Exercises V. Dictionaries and Functions bull;Dictionaries bull;Defining Functions bull;Example programs bull;Exercises VI. Additional Python Topics bull;Modules bull;Custom Sorting bull;List Comprehensions bull;String formatting or interpolation bull;File input and output bull;Unicode bull;Example Programs bull;Exercises VII. Regular Expressions bull;Applications of Regular Expressions bull;Using regular expressions in Python bull;Using regular expression objects bull;Example: Reading CHAT files bull;Homework VIII. Reading bull;Using the DOM to search a treebank bull;Using the CHILDES