Quantitative Corpus Linguistics with R

3An Introduction to R

But writing new scripts requires programming skills that are probably beyond the capabilities of the average corpus linguist.

(Meyer 2002:114 f.)

In this chapter, you will learn the foundations of R that will enable you to load, process, and store data as well as perform simple and complex text operations. Thus, this chapter prepares you for the linguistic applications in Chapter 4 and the later case study assignments.

Let us first take the most important step: the installation of R (in terms of version numbering, I am referring to R 2.8.0).

1. Download R from the CRAN website at <http://cran.at.r-project.org/>: in the section “Download and Install R”, click on the link for your operating system;
   • if you use Windows, click ...