Teaching
Introduction to linguistic through data science
Course description:
There are more than seven thousand living languages in the world. Before computers became widely used, it was hard to study linguistic diversity on a large scale. The amount of data was simply too great for one person to handle without digital tools.
Nowadays, linguistic databases such as Grambank or Leixbank bring together information on many aspects of natural languages, including phonetics, morphology, and syntax. As a result, the language sciences have been deeply transformed.
This course has two objectives. First, it introduces students to the central questions in contemporary linguistics. Second, it shows them how to use the wealth of freely available databases that make quantitative linguistic research possible.