Certificate in Computational Linguistics
The Undergrad Certificate in Computational Linguistics is a latest addition to our degree offerings. An interdisciplinary program administered by the Department of Linguistics in collaboration with the Department Computer Science, it comes in two tracks:
- The Computational Linguistics Certificate - Linguistics Track
- The Computational Linguistics Certificate - Computer Science Track
The certificate serves a common objective: to equip undergraduate students with the domain knowledge of computational linguistics, language technologies, and natural language processing, with shared foundational knowledge in Linguistics and CS. In addition, each of the two tracks comes with its own specific goal. For the CompLing-LING track, it is to train students in computational methods and data skills for linguistic problem solving. The CompLing-CS track on the other hand seeks to guide students to achieve technical proficiency in natural language engineering.
The certificate is an ideal add-on for students studying Linguistics or languages on the Dietrich side and those studying CS or related majors (InfoSci, DataSci, etc.) on the SCI side.
Curriculum
The curriculum consists of (1) prerequisite courses that are meant to ensure students’ background in foundational linguistics and CS coursework as well as (2) required courses for the certificate content.
Below are the prerequisite courses; student majoring or minoring in Linguistics or CS will take most of them as part of their curriculum. Interested students should begin with LING 1000 and CS 12, which are the prerequisite for the gateway course LING 1330. Students are not expected to complete all prerequisite courses before starting the certificate.
| Prerequisites (27 credits) | |
|---|---|
| LING 1000 Introduction to Linguistics* LING 1578 Phonetics and Phonemics* LING 1777 Syntactic Theory* LING 1682 Semantics or LING 1267 Sociolinguistics CS 12 Intro to Computing for the Humanities† (or test out of intro Python) CMPINF 401 Intermediate Java**† CS 445 Algorithms and Data Structures 1** STAT 1000 Applied Statistical Methods† (or equivalent) |
* = Linguistics major required course ** = CS major required course † = 4 credits |
Below are required courses for the two tracks. They share LING 1330 Introduction to Computational Linguistics as the gateway course as well as CS 1684 Bias and Ethical Implications in AI. The CompLing - Linguistics track emphasizes working with language data through computational methods:
| Required Courses: CompLing-LING Track (17 or 18 credits) | course prerequisites |
|---|---|
| LING 1330 Introduction to Computational Linguistics (gateway) | LING1000, CS12 |
| CS 1684 Bias and Ethical Implications in AI (or CS 590 upon approval) | LING1340, CS445 |
| LING 1340 Data Science for Linguists | LING1330 |
| LING 1810 Statistics for Research in Linguistics or LING 1269 Linguistic Variation and Change | LING1000 |
| 1 Elective | |
| Capstone (2 or 3 credits) |
The CompLing - Computer Science track on the other hand emphasizes language engineering and natural language processing. Also, note that completion of this track comes with the Minor in Linguistics, because the Linguistics prerequisites and LING 1330 together have enough credits for completing the minor.
| Required Courses: CompLing-CS Track (18 credits) | course prerequisites |
|---|---|
| LING 1330 Introduction to Computational Linguistics (gateway) | LING1000, CS12 |
| CS 1684 Bias and Ethical Implications in AI | CS1501 |
| CS 1671 Human Language Technologies | CS1501 |
| CS 1571 Introduction to AI or CS 1675 Introduction to ML | CS1501 |
| 1 Elective | |
| Capstone |
For the elective course, students may take any of the courses in the required courses lists in either track. Additionally, courses in a related subject area are eligible: LING XXXX Data-Centric NLP, Annotation, Evaluation; HIST 1030/INFSC 0013 Computational Methods in the Humanities; CS 1656 Introduction to Data Science; and more.
The capstone requirement can be satisfied through the two departments’ pre-existing systems for capstone. In Linguistics, the courses are: LING 1900 Internship, LING 1903 Directed Research; in CS, they are: CS 1900 Internship, CS 1950 Directed Research. The content of the capstone must have a significant computational linguistics focus; students should obtain a pre-approval.
Certificate Advising
Interested students should contact the Certificate Advisor: Na-Rae Han (naraehan@pitt.edu).
You are also encouraged to talk to CompLing Cert faculty in linguistics: Na-Rae Han, Yang Janet Liu, Dan Villarreal and in CS: Diane Litman, Xiang Lorraine Li, and Michael Yoder