Computational linguistics develops formalised models of natural language, realised as systems for processing text or speech. This interdisciplinary field is developing rapidly because of a) the enormous increase in the amount of electronically available data; b) ever increasing computing power; c) methods that are data-driven, using machine learning and statistics to automatically induce models from data, usually in combination with traditional linguistic rules and representations. Computational linguistics offers new possibilities to confront descriptive and theoretical linguistics with empirical evidence, increased leverage in fields where natural language constitutes the primary data (such as the humanities, social sciences, medicine and cultural heritage), and language-technology applications ranging from machine translation to dialogue systems.
