The Minor in Computational Linguistics is an 18-credit hour program. It provides students with insights into the fundamental problems, questions and methods of solution for the fields of Natural language Processing, Computational Linguistics, and Language Technology. The program develops solid programming and software development knowledge in regards to various paradigms of computer programming and in the region of complex linguistic technological problem areas, and an understanding of the foundational formulas of computational linguistics.

Program Objectives

• gain a theoretically grounded appreciation of contemporary work in Computational Linguistics (CL)/Natural Language Processing (NLP).
• develop practical skills in writing and implementing grammar fragments in mainstream CL/NLP formalisms, and in implementing systems.
• introduce styles of argumentation and evaluation criteria used in CL/NLP research.
• recognize contemporary computationally oriented grammar formalisms and linguistic descriptions using these formalisms.
• develop a critical appreciation of a selection of recent research in NLP.

Program Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this program, students will be able to:

• introduce different approaches to the study of language adopted in contemporary work in Computational Linguistics (CL)/Natural Language Processing (NLP).
• explore the interface of the study of language and contemporary work in CL/NLP.
• identify key concepts, issues, ideas, theories, techniques styles of argumentation and evaluation criteria used in contemporary CL/NLP.
• demonstrate methods and tools employed in contemporary CL/NLP research in relation to collection, analysis and presentation of data, programming, system development and evaluation.
• illustrate a range of applications that constitute natural language processing and language technology and the issues that arise in constructing natural language processing applications.
• appraise simple natural language processing systems.