Language The Computer

AY2025/2026 Semester 1

Traditionally linguistic analysis was done largely by hand, but computer-based methods and tools are becoming increasingly more widely used in contemporary research. This course provides an introduction to the key instruments and resources available on the personal computer that can assist the linguist in performing fast, flexible and accurate quantitative analyses. Students will learn a scripting language (Python) and use it and the Natural Language Tool Kit (NLTK) to analyse linguistic phenomena. The following topics will be covered in detail: File input/output Control Structures Frequency Distributions Regular Expressions Access to lexical resources Classification