Explore the language science powering tomorrow's communication technologies.
Computational Linguistics introduces you to the wonders of natural languages and the analytical methods underlying natural language technologies used worldwide.
During this two-week program, you will learn about how human languages are both the same and different, explore software and technology for processing language and human speech, and apply these tools and knowledge to directly investigate many languages in the world, including ones that are neither well-documented nor well-studied.
2025 Pre-College SummerDATES COSTS APPLICATION DEADLINES |
Experiential Learning
Working with faculty and graduate students during this course you will:
- Learn analytical, computational, and creative thinking in regard to different aspects of human languages, including morphology, syntax, semantics, phonetics and phonology.
- Study the science behind how humans learn language and the engineering behind modern natural language technologies such as voice assistants and AI chatbots.
- Participate in team projects motivated by research challenges including but not limited to speech recognition, combinatorics, parsing, and language generation.
By the end of the program, you will have sufficient linguistic knowledge, analytical skills, software expertise, and awareness of the field to pursue further independent study and to inform future choices for education and careers in fields like AI, computer science, and linguistics.
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COURSE LEADERS
Sarah Payne
Instructor
Sarah Brogden Payne is a PhD candidate in the department of Linguistics and is excited to return to their second summer of instructing! Sarah's research interests lie at the intersection of language acquisition and computational linguistics, focusing on the development of algorithmic accounts for how children learn their native language. Sarah also investigates applications of this work to develop more robust, efficient Natural Language Processing tools.
Before joining Stony Brook, Sarah completed their B.A. in Linguistics and Computer & Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania in 2022. They currently hold a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and an Institute for Advanced Computational Science Graduate Research Fellowship, and are co-advised by Professors Jordan Kodner and Jeffrey Heinz.
Logan Swanson
Instructor
Logan Swanson is a PhD candidate in the department of Linguistics working with Professor Jeffrey Heinz and Professor Thomas Graf. Coming from a computer science background, Logan’s interests include computational learning theory, computational syntax, and language change. His current research focuses on understanding the learning-theoretic elements of natural language by designing, implementing, and testing learning algorithms for linguistically relevant formal language classes. Logan is an IACS Junior Researcher.
Before attending Stony Brook, Logan worked as a software engineer designing data annotation tasks and pipelines for natural language applications. Logan has been involved in instructing introductory programming and computer science material since 2017. This is his second summer as an instructor.
Jeffrey Heinz, PhD
Professor, Department of LinguisticsAdvisor
An expert in phonology, linguistic typology and grammatical inference, Jeffrey Heinz's research focuses on theoretical and mathematical linguistics, computer science and computational learning theory. His work has been published in leading journals, and he has co-authored a book on grammatical inference. Heinz received the Linguistic Society of America's 2017 Early Career Award for his contributions to the computational science of language.
Richard Kurth Larson, PhD
Distinguished Professor, Department of Linguistics
Advisor
Richard Kurth Larson's research covers a wide range of topics in syntax and semantics, including clauses, adverbs, quantifiers, comparatives, and pronoun interpretation, with a focus on languages like Warlpiri, Japanese, Turkish and others. He has been involved in undergraduate science education in connection with the NSF-sponsored Grammar as Science Project, and his work on the Syntactica and Semantica software earned a 1998 EduCom medal. He has received multiple teaching awards, including the MIT Graduate Council Teaching Award and the Stony Brook President's Award for Excellence in Teaching.