Programming for Linguists: Perl for Language Researchers

This book is an introduction to the rudiments of Perl programming. It provides the general reader with an interest in language with the most usable and relevant aspects of Perl for writing programs that deal with language.

Through a series of simple examples and exercises, the reader is gradually introduced to the essentials of good programming. The examples are carefully constructed to make the introduction of new concepts as simple as possible, while at the same time using sample programs that make sense to someone who works with language as data. Many of these programs can be used immediately with minimal or no modification.

The text is accompanied by exercises at the end of each chapter and all the code is available from the companion website: http://www.u.arizona.edu/∼hammond.

Preface.

Acknowledgments.

1. Why Programming and Why Perl?.

2. Getting Started.

3. Basics: Control Structures And Variables.

4. Input and Output.

5. Subroutines And Modules.

6. Regular Expressions.

7. Text Manipulation.

8. HTML.

9. CGI.

Appendix A. Objects.

Appendix B. Tk.

Appendix C. Special Variables.

Appendix D. Where To Find Out More.

Index.

Michael Hammond is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Arizona. He is the author of numerous books and articles on phonology, morphology, psychophonology, and computational linguistics including Phonology of English (1999), Constraining Metrical Theory (1988), and Programming for Linguists: Java Technology for Language Researchers (Blackwell 2002).

′′Learning to program isn′t really hard,′ the author claims. Teaching good programming to linguists, however, or to arts and humanities students in general, isn t really that easy a job either, in practice. This introductory book, clear and concise as it is, should be a helpful tool at the very first stages of such an enterprise." Kwee Tjoe Liong, Universiteit van Amsterdam

"The really strong points of the book are the examples and exercises. These are almost all language–related and include useful, interesting and relevant questions and situations that the reader interested in language research will appreciate." New Zealand Studies in Applied Linguistics

"Surprisingly readable...should be on the bookshelf of any discourse analysist even thinking about tinkering with using computers to automate some portion of their data analysis...the examples and exercises are excellent, as is [Hammond′s] exegesis of the examples– slow without becoming tedious." Discourse Studies