Grzegorz Chrupała wrote:
> On 26/09/05, Mark P. Line <mark@polymathix.com> wrote:
> [...]
>> And since it's a lot easier for a good linguist to understand
>> software than it is for a good computer scientist to understand human
>> language, I'd go for a computational linguistics program that is closely
>> allied with (or even part of) a linguistics program.
>
> FWIW, I think exactly the opposite is true: it is easier to understand
> linguistics if you're a computing scientist than viceversa. Even
> though human language is more complex than the subject matter of CS,
> linguistics is still much less technically (i.e. mathematically)
> challenging than computing. Compare for example the level of
> sophistication in chapter 2 (Mathematical Foundations) and chapter 3
> (Linguistic Essentials) in Manning and SchĂĽtze's Foundations of
> Statistical NLP.
I don't like that example, because I think statistical NLP is not
linguistics -- it's what computer scientists do instead of linguistics.
But there's not really any point in debating the matter here. People will
make their own decisions about what route to take.
-- Mark
Mark P. Line
Polymathix
San Antonio, TX
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