March Semester, 2002
Department of Linguistics, University of Sydney
Lecturer Michael Walsh Transient Room 229, Ph: 9351 4228
Classes Thursday 10-12 - TBD
Friday 12-1
Office Hours: See the sign on my door.
Credit Points: 8.
This unit of study is designed to be a practical introduction to the computer analysis of language. It will show how computers can be used in humanities, text-based, and particularly linguistic applications, to do things more quickly and easily, and to do large scale analyses that were almost unthinkable before computers were developed. It will look at things like using computers for speech analysis, for corpora of text, fieldwork and topics such as computer mediated discourse, and the difficulties of translation by machine.
Prerequisites (none required!)
Note: This course assumes only minimal background with computers (ability to use mice, windows, etc., and basic word processing, or willingness to learn these skills quickly). You're not expected to already be a computer expert.
Computer Applications in Linguistics is a course that teaches some of the kind of software packages that are often used in linguistics and humanities computing more generally for purposes of finding key words in online texts, building dictionaries of languages (such as when doing fieldwork), analyzing spectrograms, and similar tasks. It is a course suitable for second year students, and is a "learning about tools" course which teaches a basic familiarity in computer tools for doing linguistic and language-related things.
To give students skills in using computers for linguistic research
To give a sense of the possibilities for processing human languages via
computers
To teach students various computational tools and concepts that can be \ used to manipulate textual data
This course requires little to no reading, and no other work, but you will need to spend time working with a computer on assignments. I will try to make the assignments not too long and gruesome so that they can be completed within a reasonable amount of time. However, it's important to realize that it is easy to get stumped with a computer problem (whether hardware, general software, or the specific software used by this class), especially as a beginner. If you're thrashing around trying to solve such a problem without really knowing what's happening, then you can easily waste hours. Therefore, it is important to work on the assignment early, so that if any problems develop you can ask for help early (as well as asking me, it's fine to ask other students for help if you are having difficulty understanding how to install or use the software, or things like that).
Also, computer systems commonly crash or freeze, floppies get lost, and so on. You should save what you are working on regularly, and always keep a backup copy, preferably in a different place. It's generally a good idea to save multiple copies of what you are working on every time you make progress in doing something. Give them all different names (Ass3 - Almost works or Ass3 - 17/9 21:18 or whatever).
There is no required textbook. In general, little reading is required for this course. I will provide some handouts and suggestions for reading mainly through a website so ….
For this unit of study you MUST have access to a computer. If you don’t already have access to a computer and to e-mail, you need to do so in the 1st week of semester.
Preliminary Syllabus [full syllabus will be distributed later]
1.7 Mar. Bureaucracy. The nature of computational research into language: gains and losses. Practical: Text on a computer. What sort of questions can be asked of a computer that cannot be asked otherwise.
VENUE [session in the Clunies Ross Lecture Theatre in the JD Stewart Building [ie old Vet Science Building near Ross St gates]
Assignment 1: handed out 7 March; due back 15 March
8 Mar SETIS VENUE [session in SETIS in Fisher Library, Level 4, western side of the building above the entrance hall]
2.14 & 15 Mar. Information Searching and Retrieval. Precision and Recall. Accessing information from computer networks. Web search engines.
3.21 & 22 Mar. Introduction to the computer analysis of speech. Recording and combining signals. Looking at signals, signal processing. Computer analysis of speech: Using signalyze for timing, pitch tracking, spectograms. Examining vowels. [Guest lecturer; StJohn Skilton]
4.28 [no class on 29 March Good Friday – public holiday]. Lexicography in a digital environment. [Guest lecturer: Jane Simpson]
Easter Break 29/3/02-5/4/02 inclusive