Data Processing and Management for Quantitative Linguistics with FoxPro.Fengxiang Fan.
Béla Hollósy · Literary and Linguistic Computing · 2011
The book under review is a remarkable volume in many ways. It addresses a number of major issues in computational linguistics via harnessing the relevant programming capabilities of Microsoft Visual FoxPro (version 6), a powerful commercial database management system, for corpus-based quantitative research in linguistics through an excellent hands-on course useful for both teachers and students in the field. The author furnishes ample compelling evidence that the unparalleled arsenal of commands and functions for data processing, string manipulation, and quantified text analysis provided by Visual FoxPro is superior to dedicated programs written specifically to address selected problems in quantitative and computationally based linguistic research. All materials, including the programs and the specially devised exercises were written by the author using version 6, but are forward compatible with even version 9. The printed volume is supplemented by a CD, which has all the programs (including the model answers to some of the exercises at the end of each chapter), the database tables, and the texts used.