The future of linguistics
Linguistics is the study of language, but, who can study linguistics and how can linguistics be studied?
Linguists are the professionals that deal with linguistics. However, it is open to anyone. It can be studied from different angles, and by people of different ages, backgrounds, and professions.
What is a linguist? What are the main activities that they do?
The linguist is the person who studies language. The term linguist is used to describe someone who studies linguistic theory in a university or other academic setting. Most linguists work in the field of language documentation and description, trying to find out how languages work and how they are structured.
What are some of the tasks included in Computational Linguistics?
Making calls, sending messages, and playing music
Answering questions, and providing recommendations
Sentiment Analysis, Speech Recognition, and Machine Translation
Sentiment Analysis, Speech Recognition, and Machine Translation
Mention 2 challenges in Conversational AI.
-Natural language understanding
-Context awareness
–Personalization
-Integration with other systems
-Ethics & Privacy
As we know, language is constantly changing and the advent of new technologies is changing the way we communicate. How can this be of relevance to linguistic studies?
It’s of relevance to linguistics since these new technologies bring with them new forms of communication and new vocabulary. Linguistics would then have to deal with advanced vocabulary that speakers could produce and comprehend.
Why do linguists believe that the changes in Language are now happening at a faster rate than ever?
Because of globalization. As the world is changing so is the way people talk and communicate. This has to do with texting, social media, and even email, it has also led to a decrease in formal writing in favor of informal writing.
Computational linguistics involves the study of linguistics. Additionally, what other areas are involved in the analysis of human speech?
Computational linguistics also involves the use of computer algorithms and models to process and analyze human speech.
What is the hierarchical organization of the units of speech?
Phone, phoneme, syllable, word, and utterance.
How is artificial intelligence (AI) impacting the way we learn?
AI, through advancements like machine learning algorithms, is changing the way we learn by teaching computers to understand and speak human language, leading to new possibilities in language learning.
Why is language not considered something you can learn, but something you experience?
Experiencing a language is when you actually use the language. When you experience a language, you will be able to speak it, you will be able to feel it, and that is when you know how it works and how it sounds.
What are chatbots? Can you give an example of how they can be implemented in our daily lives?
Chatbots are AI-powered software programs that simulate human conversations. They can be used for customer service interactions, scheduling appointments or ordering products.
Natural Language Processing is a branch of AI. NLP has two areas of study that are in charge of:
Comprehend and produce human language and artificial language
Comprehend and produce human language
Comprehend and produce artificial language
Understand and create new languages
Comprehend and produce human language
Regarding linguistics and its future, why do you think there has been a decrease in formal writing within communication?
As the world continues to become more connected and globalized, the way people communicate is changing, too. Texting, social media, and even email have led to a decrease in formal writing in favor of informal writing.
What are two of the most common applications for AI?
Natural language processing and machine translation.
What are some applications of conversational AI?
Some applications include virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa, chatbots used for customer service interactions, and voice-activated devices.
What are the two components that comprise the AI pipeline?
Speech AI: Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) and Text to Speech (TTS) conversion.
Natural Language Processing: Natural Language Understanding (NLU) and Natural Language Generation (NLG).
How does the development of AI, “natural language” processing, and machine translation, influence the field of linguistics?
These technologies offer powerful tools for analyzing linguistic data, advancing language understanding, translation, and research.
How dependent have we become on technology and AI?
Highly dependent. People are constantly using computers, phones, etc. These electronic devices have become indispensable in our daily lives. The same happens with AI, it has become a must-have assistant for humans.
What is the main difference between computational linguistics and conversational AI?
Computational linguistics analyzes and processes the human language using computational methods, whereas conversational AI focuses on the development of computer programs that can engage in natural language conversations with humans.
What is the acoustic model in ASR?
The acoustic model transforms the acoustic sign of spoken words into a sequence of phonetic units, which can be further processed by language and lexical models.