academics

Computational Linguistics

Psychocomputational models of human language and language acquisition.  Research draws from psycholinguistics, machine learning, syntactic theory and computational learning theory. Please contact William Sakas for additional questions and concerns about these requirements.

Computational linguistics is a discipline that is concerned with the study of how computers and computer algorithms can be designed to model the sounds, grammar, and meaning that make up human language. Recent dissertations and projects have investigated L1 acquisition within the Principles & Parameters framework (Hoskey); corpus-based measures of morphological productivity (Nishimoto); bigram modeling of English auxiliary inversion (Cao-Kam); frequency effects in the acquisition of English motion verbs (Nagano). Much of this research involves statistical analysis of language corpora. We offer a specialized master’s with a concentration in Computational Linguistics, as well as a certificate in Computational Linguistics for doctoral students.

Students focusing on computational linguistics usually have an undergraduate-level fluency in at least one computer language (e.g. Perl, C++, Java) and familiarity with at least one operating system such as Windows, Unix, Linux, or Mac. There are employment opportunities in both industry and academia for linguists with a specialization in computational linguistics.

M.A. (Computational) Core Courses:

• The program requires 34 credits of course work, including 28 core credits
• Pass the Supervised Research Project

Required core Courses (28 credits):

• Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics + practicum
• Syntax I + practicum
• Methods in Computational Linguistics I + practicum
• Methods in Computational Linguistics II
• Language Technology
• Corpus Analysis
• MA Supervised Research

One of the following:

• Phonology I + practicum
• Semantics I + practicum

Suggested time line

• Year 1 (Fall)
     LING70100: Introduction to Theoretical Ling. (3)
     LING73700: Introduction to Theoretical Ling. Practicum (1)
     LING71200: Syntax I (3)
     LING73700: Syntax I Practicum (1)
     * LING78100: Methods in Computational Linguistics I (3)
     LINGxxxxx: Methods in Computational Linguistics Practicum (1)
  
  
• Year 1 (Spring)
     One of the following pairs:
         LING71300: Phonology I (3) + LING73700: Phonology I Practicum (1)
         LING72399: Semantics I (3) + LING73700: Semantics I Practicum (1)
     *LING83800: Methods in Computational Linguistics II (3)
     LING83600: Language Technology: Speech and Language Processing (3)
  
  
• Year 2 (Fall)
     LING78000: Corpus Analysis (3)
     Elective (3)
  
  
• Year 2 (Spring)
     Elective (3)
     Supervised Research (3)
  

* Students with a strong computational background can replace these two courses with courses taken from the Electives list.