Description
This talk will be an introductory discussion of why Python is an awesome programming language for analyzing, and playing with, natural language. (It’s not the only one, but especially for people just diving in to using a programming language for language play or research, it’s great.) Rather than going into details of algorithms, I'm going to give some simple, easy-to-build-upon examples of how Python and open source Python packages can be used to quickly dive into some really awesome aspects of research/investigation in linguistics, and bring them together to explain, at a high level, why I believe Python is an excellent bridge between linguists interested in programming, beginning programmers interested in linguistics, and any curious people who like figuring stuff out about languages all along a spectrum of formality.