Computational linguistics

Computational Linguistics (CL) is an interdisciplinary field at the intersection of Artificial Intelligence, Linguistics, Cognitive Science, and Computer Science, devoted to the study of natural language from a computational perspective. The main theoretical and engineering goals are the understanding of natural language and the consequent development of tools and systems that can process and generate natural language, respectively. This entry focuses on CL applied to the written modality and covers the following aspects:

(i) the most common CL methods applied to different levels of analysis of natural language (morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics);

(ii) an historical account of CL through the main computational approaches used in this field and the impact of these approaches on the relation between CL and other areas of Linguistics;

(iii) the different types of language resources used in CL and their role; (iv) an overview of the most prominent applications of CL;

(iv) an outline of the current trends in CL and its areas of application.