Re: [Corpora-List] Suggested Track for Studying Computational Linguistics

From: Bob Knippen (knippen@brandeis.edu)
Date: Sat Oct 01 2005 - 22:30:44 MET DST

  • Next message: Christopher Brewster: "RE: [Corpora-List] Suggested Track for Studying Computational Linguistics"

    Having studied in both Linguistics and Computer Science departments, I
    think both Chrupala and Line are right. It is fairly easy for a good
    Linguist to understand software but maybe not as easy for a good
    programmer to understand Linguistics. At the same time, it is easier for
    a good statistician to understand enough Linguistics to do statistical
    NLP work than it is for a good Linguist to understand enough statistics
    to do statistical NLP work.

    I might even add to this that there is more to computation than
    statistics and programming/software. Many of the formal systems that
    Linguists use (formal language theory, logic, functions/lambda calculus,
    graphs/trees) come from computer science and math and you can learn a
    lot more about them in a computer science department than you can in a
    Linguistics department.

    So it seems to me there is no easy answer. You have to make a choice:
    Are you more interested in the 'Computational' part or the 'Linguistics'
    part? It's fairly hard to do both well.

    Bob

    Mark P. Line wrote:
    > Grzegorz Chrupa³a 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 Schütze'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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