Introduction to Computational Linguistics and Natural-language Processing

COMPSCI 1870 Subject & Catalog Number

Description

Natural-language-processing applications are ubiquitous – from digital assistants like Siri or Alexa, to machine translation systems like Google Translate, to fluent conversational systems like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. How do such systems work? 

This course provides an introduction to the field of computational linguistics, the study of human language using the tools and techniques of computer science, with applications to a variety of natural-language-processing problems such as these. You will work with ideas from linguistics, statistical modeling, machine learning, and neural networks, especially the technologies behind current large language models (LLMs). The course is lab- and project-based, with students working primarily in small teams, and culminates in the building and testing of a full transformer-based question-answering system.

Course Notes

This course was previously numbered CS 187.