Computational linguistics

Computational linguistic technologies, such as search engines, automatic speech recognition systems and machine translation technologies, are already commonplace in many corners of society. These technologies are the result of research and development efforts that have allowed the field to computationally model and manipulate natural language for all sorts of purposes. This chapter provides an insight into some of the key concepts involved in computational linguistics and outlines how some of these language technologies are built. It considers technologies that make use of speech data (e.g. phone calls and speech within video data) as well as text data (e.g. social media posts and emails). As well as explaining some of the inner mechanisms of computational linguistic systems, this chapter draws on a wide variety of their applications that are a result of innovations in computational linguistics. This chapter discusses some of the benefits these technologies bring to society, but it also considers the challenges they pose.