Computatinal Linguistics
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Computational Linguistics

CMPSCI 591N — Spring 2006
Spring 2006

Description:

Computational Linguistics addresses the fundamental questions at the intersection of human languages and computer science. How can computers acquire, comprehend and produce natural languages, such as English? How can computational methods give us insight into observed human language phenomena? How can you get a job at Google?

In this interdisciplinary introductory course, you will learn how computers can do useful things with human languages, such as traslate from French into English, summarize a magazine article into a few sentences, and find the main topics in the day's news. You will also learn about how computational methods can help linguists explain language phenomena, including automatic discovery of different word senses and phrase structure.

Over the past decade, computational linguistics has been revolutionized by statistical and probabilistic methods; you will learn abouit robust methods of probabilistic parameter estimation and inference. Our will will include learning new methods, discussions, and hands-on laboratories. While some limited computer programming will be necessary, the course does not assume previous experience in programming.

This course is aimed at CS and Linguistics undergraduates and Linguistics graduate students. Either CMPSCI 287, or LINGUIST 401, or graduate standing in Linguistics. (Computer Science graduate students are not encouraged to attend.)