Doing Corpus Linguistics

The seminar Computer Applications in Linguistics is concerned with topics in the domain of computational processing of natural language and computational implementations of linguistic theory and methodology. The focus is on questions of computational technology in linguistics and the way linguistic theory, data and methodology have influenced and informed the way language data is processed computationally. In this research-based seminar, we are going to explore different areas of linguistics, corpus and computational linguistics and the ways in which computational, algorithmic techniques have found their way into processing and analysis of linguistic data. We are going to be exploring current research on the processiing of large digital corpora, automatic processing and annotation and qualitative as well as quantitative approaches to linguistic data. The seminar starts off with an introductory section to give an overview of important developments in the history of computer applications in linguistics such as for example machine translation. We will then delve deeper into different areas of corpus and computational linguistics and natural language processing. The seminar is research-based. This means that students are expected to also work on projects of their own in such a way that they can present them in various forms typical of scientific communication as abstracts, posters and presentations as well as a final paper which is to be written according to the guidelines of a major computational linguistics conference, the Association of Computational Linguistics (ACL) conference. To this end, students work on a relevant research area to be discussed with me, identify research questions and work out the state of the art of research in research areas relevant to their project. All students will prepare a poster presenting their research as well as present their paper to the group in a student research workshop at the end of the summer semester and submit their work as a term paper. The seminar thus pursues two goals: a) to provide an introduction to research themes and topics in corpus and computational linguistics and natural language processing, and b) to acquaint students with the forms of written and oral presentation of scientific research. In this process, students will become familiar with important texts, conferences and data in this domain and get an overview of past and present research in the field and an outlook on future research areas. The course materials and all submissions will be via the e-learning platform moodle. The moodle course goes online at the beginning of the semester. Students are expected to participate in a simpulation of a submission to a conference in corpus and computational linguistics. This entails the following steps to which all students are expected to actively contribute: abstract submission, peer review (all students review the abstracts of their peers), poster presentation and peer review of posters, project presentation and peer review / feedback after oral presentations, final paper submission accoding to the guidelines of a major conference. This class requires participants' full commitment in the interest of all participants. It is designed to introduce students to processes in the corpus and computational linguistics research community as well as project work in the corporate world including peer review, research quality assurrance processes, peer disucssion and feedback of all projects. Active in-class participation is expected to ensure the success of this class for all participants.