Master of Science in Computational Linguistics<\/a>, the only program of its kind in New Jersey to provide the interdisciplinary training in computer science and linguistics to help machines process human language and to help linguists understand language through computer models.<\/p>\n\u201cComputational linguistics is not a brand-new field, but these days it’s developing rapidly,\u201d says Anna Feldman, professor of Linguistics and Computer Science. \u201cFor those who like languages, computers and math, it is probably the best time to be alive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Melaney Moffitt \u201919 will be among the first cohort in the Computational Linguistics master\u2019s program. Since graduating this spring with a bachelor\u2019s in Linguistics, she is working for a company that provides artificial intelligence to field customer-service calls. She is also continuing research annotating speakers of African-American English to help technology improve \u2013 and to find the gaps \u2013 in interpreting dialects, she explains.<\/p>\n
Computational Linguistics collaborates across campus, Feldman says. Inside the University\u2019s Natural Language Processing (NLP) lab, her work includes automatic detection of figurative language and the linguistic fingerprints of political censorship. Eileen Fitzpatrick, the department\u2019s chairperson, is a computational linguist working on deception detection.<\/p>\n
Montclair State students play a large role in contributing to the body of work, including assisting with research on automatic detection of suicidal tendencies and detection of depression. Kei Yin Ng, who graduated this spring with the MA in Applied Linguistics, continues research on internet censorship. \u201cStudying internet censorship is not a trivial task. It requires a lot of careful data manipulation to draw insights from a large amount of data,\u201d she says. \u201cMy research advisors offered great support and guidance during the process.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the former radio station, Howell is leading a team of undergraduate and graduate students examining acoustic and electrical waveforms, and statistical visualizations. The students include Zachary Zerby \u201916, a graduate assistant working toward a master\u2019s degree in Applied Linguistics. He\u2019s helping develop the algorithms for speech technology \u2013 things like Siri, Google Assistant and Dragon speech recognition \u2013 to better understand nuanced language.<\/p>\n
As varied as the research, the students contributing to the work come to the study of linguistics from many different paths, including pre-med, speech pathology and music.<\/p>\n
Since graduating from a music conservatory, Stachowicz has supplemented her singing career by teaching English lessons to non-native speakers. She enrolled in The Graduate School at Montclair State to research \u201cmusic as a teaching tool and as a therapy tool in a language modality.\u201d<\/p>\n
This summer she is the research assistant for Covey\u2019s experimental study using electroencephalography (EEG) to examine how individual differences in memory and other cognitive skills influence second language comprehension \u2013 specifically looking at brain activity for patterns on how native English speakers and Chinese-speaking learners of English comprehend complex sentences in real time.<\/p>\n
\u201cLinguistics brings together science and humanities in a really unique way,\u201d Covey says.<\/p>\n
Learn more about Montclair State\u2019s new master\u2019s program in Computational Linguistics<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n