Computational linguistics involves anything that combines computers and human language. This subfield has gained renewed prominence with the recent progress in generative AI and Large Language Models (LLM). The development and study of generative AI systems rely on understanding the nature of human linguistic computation, and how that relates to the computation that supports generative AI. Computational linguists also use computational tools to model language production and perception, language learning, and language change, and to support the management and analysis of large linguistic corpora and the documentation of endangered languages.
Steven Abney specializes in computational linguistics, particularly parsing and language learning. His interests also include how computational tools can support language documentation. Jonathan Brennan is interested in how semantic representations are constructed in real time, and how computation can be used to compare different theoretical models of semantics and syntax. Huteng Dai's research focuses on the computational modeling of phonological learning, as well as on how the computational properties of generative AI and LLMs compare to human cognition. Ezra Keshet has interests in computational semantics. Richard Lewis (Psychology and Linguistics) studies computational models of human sentence processing. Richmond Thomason (Philosophy and Linguistics, emeritus) has interests in natural language generation and dialogue systems.
