The Application of Regular Expression Patterns in Computational Linguistics

Computational linguistics is a new and practical field of study; however, the use of programming languages to conduct studies in this field is cumbersome and time-consuming. Employing regular expressions to conduct computational linguistic studies is easier for linguistics students than learning and using common programming languages. Regular expressions, as patterns, seem to be more straightforward than common programming languages for their ease of use in different subbranches of linguistics such as syntax, phonology, corpus, etc. Regular expressions are used in computer sciences to find intended words, expressions, and patterns in a string. These regular expressions are employed to process a text flexibly and efficiently. Regular expressions themselves, with a general pattern notation almost like a mini programming language, allow you to describe and parse text. This paper presents the regular expressions patterns, and how they are employed to analyze complicated linguistic issues. Furthermore, the applications of these patterns in linguistic studies are brought forth through several examples

Keywords:

computational linguistics , corpus , morphology , phonology , regular expression