Python Programming for Linguistics and Digital Humanities

Martin Weisser is an independent researcher. He has previously held several academic appointments, including Visiting Professor at the University of Salzburg, Austria, Professor of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics in Foreign Languages at Guangdong University, China, and Adjunct Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. He is the author of Practical Corpus Linguistics: An Introduction to Corpus-Based Language Analysis (Wiley Blackwell, 2016) and the developer of several software tools for language analysis.

• List of Figures xiAbout the Companion Website xii1 Introduction 11.1 Why Program? Why Python? 11.2 Course Overview and Aims 41.3 A Brief Note on the Exercises 51.4 Conventions Used in this Book 61.5 Installing Python 61.5.1 Installing on Windows 61.5.2 Installing on the Mac 71.5.3 Installing on Linux 81.6 Introduction to the Command Line/Console/Terminal 81.6.1 Activating the Command Line on Windows 91.6.2 Activating the Command Line on the Mac or Linux 91.7 Editors and IDEs 101.8 Installing and Setting Up WingIDE Personal 101.9 Discussions 112 Programming Basics I 152.1 Statements, Functions, and Variables 152.2 Data Types – Overview 172.3 Simple Data Types 182.3.1 Strings 182.3.2 Numbers 202.3.3 Binary Switches/Values 212.4 Operators – Overview 212.4.1 String Operators 212.4.2 Mathematical Operators 222.4.3 Logical Operators 242.5 Creating Scripts/Programs 252.6 Commenting Your Code 262.7 Discussions 283 Programming Basics II 333.1 Compound Data Types 333.2 Lists 353.3 Simple Interaction with Programs and Users 373.4 Problem Solving and Damage Control 383.4.1 Getting Help from Your IDE 383.4.2 Using the Debugger 393.5 Control Structures 403.5.1 Conditional Statements 413.5.2 Loops 423.5.3 while Loops 433.5.4 for Loops 443.5.5 Discussions 454 Intermediate String Processing 534.1 Understanding Strings 534.2 Cleaning Up Strings 544.3 Working with Sequences 554.3.1 Overview 554.3.2 Slice Syntax 564.4 More on Tuples 574.5 ‘Concatenating’ Strings More Efficiently 594.6 Formatting Output 604.6.1 Using the % Operator 604.6.2 The format Method 614.6.3 f- Strings 614.6.4 Formatting Options 624.7 Handling Case 624.8 Discussions 635 Working with Stored Data 715.1 Understanding and Navigating File Systems 715.1.1 Showing Folder Contents 725.1.2 Navigating and Creating Folders 745.1.3 Relative Paths 755.2 Stored Data 765.3 Opening and Closing Files 765.3.1 File Opening Modes 775.3.2 File Access Options 775.4 Reading File Contents 785.5 Error Handling 795.6 Writing to Files 825.7 Working with Folders and Paths 835.7.1 The os Module 835.7.2 The Path Object of the libpath Module 845.8 Discussions 866 Recognising and Working with Language Patterns 936.1 The re Module 936.2 General Syntax 946.3 Understanding and Working with the Match Object 946.4 Character Classes 966.5 Quantification 976.6 Masking and Using Special Characters 986.7 Regex Error Handling 986.8 Anchors, Groups and Alternation 996.9 Constraining Results Further 1016.10 Compilation Flags 1016.11 Discussions 1027 Developing Modular Programs 1097.1 Modularity 1097.2 Dictionaries 1097.3 User- defined Functions 1117.4 Understanding Modules 1127.5 Documenting Your Module 1157.6 Installing External Modules 1167.7 Classes and Objects 1177.7.1 Methods 1187.7.2 Class Schema 1187.8 Testing Modules 1197.9 Discussions 1208 Word Lists, Frequencies and Ordering 1298.1 Introduction to Word and Frequency Lists 1298.2 Generating Word Lists 1298.3 Sorting Basics 1308.4 Generating Basic Word Frequency Lists 1318.5 Lambda Functions 1328.6 Discussions 1349 Interacting with Data and Users Through GUIs 1439.1 Graphical User Interfaces 1439.2 PyQt Basics 1449.2.1 The General Approach to Designing GUI- based Programs 1449.2.2 Useful PyQt Widgets 1459.2.3 A Minimal PyQt Program 1469.2.4 Deriving from a Main Window 1489.2.5 Working with Layouts 1489.2.6 Defining Widgets and Assigning Layouts 1509.2.7 Widget Properties, Methods and Signals 1509.2.8 Adding Interactive Functionality 1529.3 Designing More Advanced GUIs 1539.3.1 Actions 1539.3.2 Creating Menus, Tool and Status Bars 1539.3.3 Working with Files and Folder in PyQt 1559.4 Discussions 15910 Web Data and Annotations 17110.1 Markup Languages 17110.2 Brief Intro to HTML 17210.3 Using the urllib.request Module 17410.4 Extracting Text from Web Pages 17710.5 List and Dictionary Comprehension 17810.6 Brief Intro to XML 17910.7 Complex Regex Replacements Using Functions 18210.8 Brief Intro to the TEI Scheme 18210.8.1 The Header 18310.8.2 The Text Body 18410.9 Discussions 18811 Basic Visualisation 20111.1 Using Matplotlib for Basic Visualisation 20111.2 Creating Word Clouds 20711.3 Filtering Frequency Data Through Stop- Words 20811.4 Working with Relative Frequencies 21011.5 Comparing Frequency Data Visually 21211.6 Discussions 21612 Conclusion 227Appendix – Program Code 231Index 273