Computational Linguistics

Computational approaches are becoming increasingly popular in the social sciences and in the humanities, and linguistics is no exception. Large databases, computer models and statistical analyses – to mention better-known research paradigms – allow to revisit long-debated issues in the field, such as how languages are born, change, compete or die. This course provides an overview of the available methods and of their application to sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, phonology, syntax and other fields. Students will be acquainted with various approaches and eventually be able to assess the benefits of such approaches for their own research. During the tutorials, students will acquire basic skills in computational linguistics, such as extracting data from existing linguistic databases or modelling linguistic diversity.