This book is an ideal starting point for linguists who are approaching computer programming for the first time. Assuming no background knowledge of programming, the author introduces basic ideas and techniques needed and helps readers to develop their understanding of electronic texts.

Practical examples are designed to help the reader to identify basic issues in handling language data, conduct simple analyses in morphology/morphosyntax and phonotactics, create frequency lists from corpus materials, to gather basic descriptive statistics on texts and to design graphical user interfaces for writing more efficient and easy-to-use analysis tools.

Two different types of exercise help readers to either learn to interpret and understand illustrative sample code, or to develop algorithmic thinking and solution strategies through turning a series of instructions into sample programs.

Key Features

*a 'how to' guide for students of linguistics attempting to process material for dissertations, theses or advanced research work *Programming theory and techniques are clearly illustrated through the use of linguistics examples *Coverage progresses from basic to more complex topics and methodologies *Chapters on the advantages of modularity and associated issues provide a basis for more advanced projects *Introduces graphical user interfaces, providing a basis for user-friendly programs and multilingual analysis