Language and Computers

Language and Computers introduces students to the fundamentals of how computers are used to represent, process, and organize textual and spoken information. Concepts are grounded in real-world examples familiar to students’ experiences of using language and computers in everyday life.

A real-world introduction to the fundamentals of how computers process language, written specifically for the undergraduate audience, introducing key concepts from computational linguistics.
Offers a comprehensive explanation of the problems computers face in handling natural language
Covers a broad spectrum of language-related applications and issues, including major computer applications involving natural language and the social and ethical implications of these new developments
The book focuses on real-world examples with which students can identify, using these to explore the technology and how it works
Features “under-the-hood” sections that give greater detail on selected advanced topics, rendering the book appropriate for more advanced courses, or for independent study by the motivated reader.

Author Biography

Markus Dickinson is Assistant Professor at the Department ofLinguistics, Indiana University and currently the director of theComputational Linguistics program. His research focuses onimproving linguistic annotation for natural language processingtechnology and automatically analyzing the language of secondlanguage learners. Chris Brew is a Senior Research Scientist with theEducational Testing Service in Princeton, where he is currently thescientific lead for the c-rater project on automated short answergrading. He has been active in Natural Language Processing for over20 years, first in the UK, then as Associate Professor ofLinguistics and Computer Science at The Ohio State University,where he co-directed the Speech and Language TechnologiesLaboratory, as well as the Computational Linguistics Program. Detmar Meurers is Professor of Computational Linguistics andhead of the Theoretical Computational Linguistics group at theUniversity of Tubingen. He has a longstanding commitment toteaching Computational Linguistics and Linguistics in a way thatcombines current technology and research issues with thefundamentals of the field. His research emphasizes the role oflinguistic insight and linguistic models in ComputationalLinguistics. His most recent research adds a focus on theory andapplications related to second language acquisition.