Second Year

Semester 1

Second year continues the study of linguistics, language and programming, becoming more specific and indepth. It shows how Computational Linguistics combines these areas, and develops the abilities of the students.

Click here for an example of the timetable for semester one.

French/German/Spanish language V:
There are three hours of language classes per week. This course concentrates on the skills needed in order to participate in academic activities in the course of the year abroad.

Corpus Linguistics:
Introductary course to Corpus Linguistics which extends the concepts introduced in Empirical Linguistics to the treatment of large collections of naturally occuring language, i.e. corpora.

Syntax for Natural Language Processing
This subject, two hours per week, continues the study of syntax, with reference to grammatical formalisms, such as Transformational Grammar, Government Binding Theory, LFG and HPSG.

Computational Linguistics 1:
This subject introduces the major concepts and techniques in the areas of Formal Language Theory and Complexity Theory, and introduces the main parsing strategies. It entails three hours of lectures and two hours of lab work - programming - per week.

Algorithms and Datastructures:
This computer course, 'ADS', is studied with the students doing Computer Applications. It entails two hours of lectures and two hours of lab work per week. The aim of the module is to give students an indepth understanding of the important data structures and algorithms that are used to build software.

Introduction to PERL:
The aim of this module is an Introduction to Perl and Perl CGI scripts: basic programming in a new programming language.
 
 





Semester 2

A further six subjects are studied in semester 2. Here is an example of the timetable.

Languages and Computability
This course covers theories of speech, compuatation and the relationship between speech and computational problems.

Artificial Intelligence
This course covers the most important aspects of Artifical Intelligence such as logic, algorithms and information representation.

French/German/Spanish VI
The main aspect of this course is a group project. This is based on current events in the news. The project gives students good experience of working as a team and presenting material.

Computational Linguistics II
This course covers the main theories and methods of compuatational phonetics, morphology, tagging and the statistical processing of natural speech using computers.

Semantics for Natural Language Processing
Semantics is about the meaning of words. This course prepares students for the fourth year semantics course. It extends the material that is covered in first year. Students write programs that, for example, decide what nouns the verb "to eat" takes or how sentences can be broken down into their logical components. Semantics is very important in the writing of large machine translation programs.

French/German/Spanish Translation Skills
In this subject students study the various aspects of translation such as its use in industry, culture and linguistics. Students translate computer texts as well as texts from related areas. This course is a great aid to a students vocabulary.