| CODE | LIN3009 | ||||||||
| TITLE | Synoptic Unit in Language Technology: Human and Machine Communication | ||||||||
| UM LEVEL | 03 - Years 2, 3, 4 in Modular Undergraduate Course | ||||||||
| MQF LEVEL | 6 | ||||||||
| ECTS CREDITS | 6 | ||||||||
| DEPARTMENT | Institute of Linguistics and Language Technology | ||||||||
| DESCRIPTION | During this study-unit, participants will be assigned readings and participate in discussions focusing on the role of technology in facilitating communication between humans, with particular reference to: - The use of language technology on social media; - The role of language technology in the analysis of human-produced linguistic artefacts, such as narratives, blogs, etc. Study-unit Aims: This study-unit encourages students to take a broad view of the role of language in technology-mediated communication, and on the way in which applications of Natural Language Processing contribute to this, through their deployment on social media platforms and in the analysis of text and speech to distil information from them. This focus will permit students to bring to bear their knowledge of methods and applications in Language Technology, to take a more applied and multi-disciplinary perspective. Learning Outcomes: 1. Knowledge & Understanding: By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - Discuss the role of Language Technology in computer-mediated communication; - Describe the methods used to analyse human linguistic artefacts and acquire information from them; - Evaluate the positive and negative impact of language technology on human communication. 2. Skills: By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - Evaluate the social impact of new forms of communication; - Identify the best methods to use to acquire knowledge from unstructured data in the form of linguistic artefacts (text or speech). Main Text/s and any supplementary readings: Main Texts: - D. Jurafsky and J.H. Martin (2009). Speech and Language Processing (2nd Ed). New York: Prentice Hall. Supplementary Readings: Students will be given a variety of articles reflecting contemporary issues in Human Language Technology; they will be subject to change from year to year to reflect changes in the field. These will be used to structure the synoptics sessions. The following is a selection of such readings: - B. Pang and L. Lee (2008). Opinion Mining and Sentiment Analysis. Foundations and Trends in Information Retrieval 2(1-2), pp. 1–135. [Available online at http://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/llee/opinion-mining-sentiment-analysis-survey.html] - A. Newson, D. Houghton and J. Patten (2009). Blogging and other social media. Farnham, UK: Gower. |
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| STUDY-UNIT TYPE | Independent Study, Practicum & Seminar | ||||||||
| METHOD OF ASSESSMENT |
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| LECTURER/S | Albert Gatt Patrizia Paggio Lonneke van der Plas Alexandra Vella |
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The University makes every effort to ensure that the published Courses Plans, Programmes of Study and Study-Unit information are complete and up-to-date at the time of publication. The University reserves the right to make changes in case errors are detected after publication.
The availability of optional units may be subject to timetabling constraints. Units not attracting a sufficient number of registrations may be withdrawn without notice. It should be noted that all the information in the description above applies to study-units available during the academic year 2023/4. It may be subject to change in subsequent years. |
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