340142 VU Introduction to Computational Linguistics (2023W)

Participants will be provided a brief overview of classical approaches and branches of linguistics as well as a sound insight into various methods and tasks in the field of computational linguistics. Terminological subtleties, such as the difference between Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Computational Linguistics, will be addressed. Current research approaches as well as possible further research topics will be discussed.

Contents:
- Introduction to the concepts and directions of traditional linguistics
- Classical tasks of computational linguistics
- Presentation of different methods for language processing from tokenization to sentiment analysis
- Different NLP systems and computational linguistic analysis models
- Discussion of the current state of research as well as further research ideas
- Practical introduction to basic methods of automatic language processing

Methods:
- Theoretical introduction to linguistics and computational linguistics
- Short presentations by students on selected current research work in the field (so-called lightning talks in each class)
- Development and implementation of practical solutions to current problems in computational linguistics (e.g., in the form of shared tasks from recent years)