Formal and Natural Languages

Course goals

Students will acquire knowledge of:

(i) fundamental aspects of formal linguistics and models of computability;

(i) fundamental aspects of formal linguistics;

In particular, the following topics are covered:

•          advanced set theory
•          formal language learning and automata theory
•          morpho-syntactic structure of natural language
•          parsing methods

 
Students who successfully complete the course will be able to work with the formal methods for formal and natural languages.

Content

The course provides an introduction to some of the core ideas of both the study of computation, in the form of formal languages, and the study of natural language. That is, the course addresses formal languages from the general perspective of computational problems, with the human language faculty as a specific case. Topics covered include: advanced set theory, formal language learning, the relationship between formal and natural languages, the processing of language by humans and machines. In the seminars, the participant acquires practical skills in handling formal methods and techniques used to analyse and model various aspects of language.

Additional information

Parts of this course are taught in English. The titles of previous editions of this course was "Formele en Natuurlijke Talen" and "Inleiding Taalkunde voor KI."

Please note: the time slot shown here is not yet final and may still be modified until the 3rd Wednesday in September.