Lisp is very good at dealing with lists of things and sentences are lists of words in Lisp naturally. Since text processing was an early goal for AI, Lisp lent

Lisp is very good at dealing with lists of things and sentences are lists of words in Lisp naturally. Since text processing was an early goal for AI, Lisp lent itself well to that work. In addition, the Lisp REPL is ideal for exploratory programming where it is not yet known what program needs to be written. Finally, Lisp is ideal for creating DSLs and these are also useful in AI and semantic work.