Characters and Grammar: How Linguists Can Become More Fluent in R

Abstract

R is not just statistics software, but a full-fledged computer language, and with its thousands of extra packages linguists can program it to do things far beyond basic statistical analysis and graph-making (though of course R is great at those things too). In this talk I hope to give a painless introduction to the grammar of R for those who have not yet dared to try it, while still offering some new ideas to more experienced users. The empirical focus is on my own explorations of the “grammar” of Chinese characters, which will allow me to survey a variety of methods of particular use to Chinese linguists, including how to work with non-Roman writing systems, how to analyze text corpora, how to compile data from lab experiments, and of course how to run statistical analyses and make graphs, from the simple to the fancy, including new types of analyses that you can invent yourself with some basic concepts in probability and a bit of programming. If time permits, I will also demonstrate how diverse and powerful R’s extra packages really are by highlighting tools for sound and image processing (the latter useful for the study of writing systems and sign language). Above all, I will emphasize that there is no reason to feel intimidated: anybody can become ever more fluent in R through workshops like these, textbooks, internet searches, and most importantly, patient trial and error.