/ling/ linguistics general; Embarrassing xkcd Comic Edition

Interdisciplinary fields are so difficult to classify. Triggers my autism.

>Fantasy constructed languages as Lord of Ring's Elvish are cool by the way
Speaking of autism, a certain linguist was ludicrously committed to producing a functional language for his elf book.

This

Comp Ling is the shit man. If you want to work in AI, this is your career path.

Reporting

>Veeky Forums
You guys sure don't browse it do you?

Irregardless has been a word for over 200 years, it's time people got over it.

>implying linguistics is about muh prescriptivism

actually it's both

>You guys sure don't browse it do you?
Lol no

>Irregardless has been a word for over 200 years
And it still sounds gay.

The study of Linguistics relies heavily on both science and math to function.

How can I start from the bottom with linguistics? I want to cultivate this as a hobby.

rand(all) is one of only a few people who I would actually punch in the face if I ever had the displeasure of meeting them.

this thread is off topic. dont post this on Veeky Forums. figure out for yourself which of the humanities boards it belongs on.

Linguistics is very mathematically rigorous

>computational =/g/

Dumbest post

Statistics & Discrete Mathematics are used a lot in CompLing

Things like Graph Theory, Neural Networks, Data mining & Linear Algebra are not uncommon.

For Signal Processing, someone with EE/Math solid background could apply even more advanced math to linguistics
Such as Hilbert Spaces, Functional & Fourier analysis, Laplace transforms, Z-transform, Stochastic Processes, Dynamical Systems & Differential equation, Chaos Theory, Fractals and so on.

grug speak as grug want
prescriptivist say grug not speak as grug want
grug club prescriptivist

I just laughed out loud reading that comic, in the middle of a Starbucks, and it was embarrassing.

I don't remember having ever genuinely laughed reading and xkcd comic, although I sometimes giggled internally.

Subtle bait, I like it.

>I just laughed out loud reading that comic, in the middle of a Starbucks, and it was embarrassing.
it should be

Veeky Forums memes aside, if I wished to remain within academia and teach at the university level, should I pursue CompLing or pure Math?

Kek, can't believe the meme I started is getting popular.

Lingustics has piqued my interest in the last few months and I am applying to unis in a few months. Could some one give me the 411, I was planning on doing something in chemistry until I realised how shite I am at electrochem. Chemistry is still on the books but lingustics might beat it out.
So can any of you give info to help me make my decision.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asi.4630320516/full

I'm a CompLing fag working in machine learning and artificial intelligence. Take the time to peruse a few articles on the subject --you may find it engaging.

Alright lingfriends, what group do you think basque is part of and why?

Vasconic, of course.

Trask, L. The History of Basque, Routledge: 1997, ISBN 0-415-13116-2

Link?

Be sure to keep your math skills sharp if you do apply: ling is much more mathematically rigorous than people realize.

Most college linguistics are in the same trouble as computer science as in:

They teach it wrong

>They teach it wrong
Depends on the college. Which program(s) are you referring to?

Math + Ling
(Major/Minors Combo or Joint degree)

it's so cute how people respect linguists

We're all very jealous of your Bio degree.

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I think linguistics is very scholarly

>The History of Basque
Looks like an interesting read.

>>/g/
>>/e/
>>/t/
>>/out/

You mean the image or the meme itself?

Every day until you love it.

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Thanks for the info. Seems right up my alley.

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I like this thread.

I did undergrad in Linguistics, now I'm doing a Comp Ling master's. AMA.

what things does undergrad linguistics cover

im curious if i can make my computer science // theoretical computer science major into a linguistics one

Seems like you all have a huge ship on your shoulder.

English teacher here --convince me to go directly into Comp Ling for my master's instead of acquiring an online math bachelor's.

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Theoretical Ling has a bunch of different areas of study that are only tangentially related. Syntax, phonology, and semantics are probably required courses in any program, and if you want to be well-rounded you should take pragmatics, phonetics, and typology as well. If you're looking at the comp ling angle I'd say semantics is the most important but it depends, phonetics is also really helpful if you're interested in speech recognition. One thing to note is that syntax will help less for computation than you might expect, because computational methods tend to use a different type of grammar than you learn in a chomskyan linguistics program.

Well I find it interesting, and it's definitely gonna be worth way more financially than a math bachelor's. It'll be really tough coming from just English though so you NEED to start learning to program ahead of time.

>It'll be really tough coming from just English though so you NEED to start learning to program ahead of time.
Noted, I've been dabbling in the dark arts a bit already.

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Good luck friend, I'm in the same boat because I certainly didn't learn any math/programming in Linguistics. It was a really really hard transition.

Which uni are you attending, user, if you don't mind me asking?

the only thing ive done is theory of computation, automata, discrete math, and abstract algebra and combining all these things together in various ways

i guess its too late for me

>its too late for me
That's quitter talk. I won't abide by such pussified rubbish.

You're right user. I should commit. I should kill myself.

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University of Arizona. Not the most scenic location, but it's a great program/department, I recommend it. Another thing to mention is that it's very industry focused; instead of a traditional master's thesis, you have to find an internship somewhere and then write a report about it.

Too late? You've done way more than I ever did before my program. I wish I had been that prepared.

>instead of a traditional master's thesis, you have to find an internship somewhere and then write a report about it.
Oh god, that's news to me. I was interested in remaining within academia and possibly teaching. It wouldn't be that much of an issue, but still.

Well the point of this program for a lot of people is that it's a terminal master's, no PhD. So it's like a two-year bootcamp that gets you ready for industry. The internship thing might be just for Arizona, there are other good programs like Washington and Brandeis and I don't know what they do in that regard.

But that being said, there are paths to academia. A few of my colleagues are actually Ling PhDs who are doing Comp Ling as a specialty, so they can dip their toes in industry but still do all their academic stuff, especially because computational methods are becoming important even in mainstream Linguistics. Another person is in the terminal master's like me but is now applying to Comp Sci PhD programs cause he's about to graduate. Of course you might want to just look for PhD programs in Comp Ling; I don't know anything about that but I'd assume they exist.

Ah, I see. Thanks for the heads up. Are Comp Ling graduates really able to transition into Comp Sci PhD programs?

Oh yeah, definitely. The thing they don't tell you in the brochure is that Comp Ling is actually more like 90% CS and 10% Ling in my department, which may be a good or a bad thing depending on your viewpoint. There are definitely times where my Ling knowledge has helped me (it's good for big-picture stuff, like understanding why we need to solve certain problems), but my classes are basically all in the CS or Information departments, because when it comes down to it you need to actually implement things, and that takes math/programming more than it takes knowledge of x-bar trees or optimality theory.

Disclaimer though that some programs might place more emphasis on the linguistics side. There's certainly a place for that if you're doing lots of Natural Language Processing, but my program focuses more on machine learning, AI, neural nets, etc.

Thanks again for the insight: its genuinely appreciated.

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No problem at all, it's fun to talk about it and it lets me procrastinate on my AI homework.

>AI homework
I want to be able to blow people off because I have "AI homework" to complete.

Lmao. The same /g/ that incessantly posts about their favourite chink smartphone and Operating System? No one on /g/ is interested in anything 'computational'. Let alone linguistics, mathematics, or even computer science in general.

>AI homework
mind blown.

Comp Ling is a really fascinating field.

A Mix of STEM and humanities

All humanities should be taught in this way,
with a STEM approach.

Not gonna lie, I decided to take the class largely because of the cool factor. Tough class but we made a program that can play Pac-Man, so I'd say it's going well.

Lmao

>huge ship
ayyyyyy

You're ignorant, I understand.

>Tough class but we made a program that can play Pac-Man, so I'd say it's going well.
Where the fuck do I sign.

Yes, but if you want to remain within the sphere of Linguistics while advancing the study of Comp Ling, I'd suggest considering a Linguistics PhD.

I'mhow can I get into computational linguistics proper?

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Apply to a Com Ling graduate degree program.

I'm still an undergrad and I'd like to see what things I should study or textbooks i could use

I'm the Arizona comp ling guy from earlier. One big part of comp ling is natural language processing (NLP), which is how you take raw text and extract information from it to help you do cool stuff with it down the line. Like you might want to separate all the words in a corpus of text and get their parts of speech or syntactic information, that kind of thing. Then you can use that processed text for applications like machine learning, for example teaching a model to distinguish spam emails from legit emails using language data.There's also speech recognition/synthesis, which of course is what you see in Amazon's Alexa, Siri, Cortana, etc.

Anyway that's just an example. I recommend looking at Jurafsky and Martin's "Speech and Language Processing", that's a very popular book and it goes over a ton of stuff (not just speech like the title implies). Even just skimming the table of contents will give you some ideas. Another good book is Manning and Schütze's "Foundations of Statistical NLP"; it seems to overlap party with Jurafsky and Martin, but it was helpful anyway.

Oh and math-wise I'd say the list of topics is basic calculus, linear algebra, probability/stats, and logic. But you don't need very deep knowledge of them, assuming you're focusing on applied stuff instead of reading hard theoretical research.

>people who don’t know what linguistics is

what if I want a focus in theory

No good entry level books on that unfortunately

How does /ling/ feel about word vectors?
blog.acolyer.org/2016/04/21/the-amazing-power-of-word-vectors/
Is the future of language going to exist in high dimensional arrays rather then pleb tier phonetics?

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>word vectors
This is some dense shit; allow me some time to digest.

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Is this essentially the quantification of language?

I think they're really cool and I know a lot of people are using them now. I don't know enough to really comment on them though.

>linguists amazed by the power of linear algebra
>literally first year undergrad level mathematics

fucking classic. how does it feel to be hardcore brainlets?

The fact that the math is so simple is part of what makes it amazing. Using simple math to get a pc to generalize language desu

It's a deliberate simplification of a far more complex system of language modeling, you witless simpleton.

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Linguistics is like how psychology is, there is plenty of science in both but disciplines within them are not scientific so you cannot call the whole discipline a science strictly in the same way you would physics.