Computational Linguistics

This course is an introduction to topics at the intersection of computation and language, oriented toward linguists and cognitive scientists. We will study computational linguistics from both scientific and engineering angles -- the use of computational modeling to address scientific questions in linguistics and cognitive science, as well as the design of computational systems to solve engineering problems in natural language processing (NLP). The course will combine analysis and discussion of these approaches with training in the programming and mathematical foundations necessary to put these methods into practice. Our goal in this quarter is for students to leave the course able to engage with and evaluate research in cognitive/linguistic modeling and NLP, and to be able to implement intermediate-level computational models.