Hi everyone. My advisor at USC recently notified me that USC is introducing a new computational linguistics major and he emailed me a copy of what the requirements should look like (I apologize for the length).
Lower Division
LING 210: Introduction to Linguistics
Empirical study of the sounds and structures of human language;syntax and semantics; language change; linguistic universals.
LING 285: Human Language and Technology
Study of human linguistic competence and technologies that simulate it. Grammar, parsing, text generation; semantics, pragmatics, sense disambiguation; phonetics, speech synthesis, speech recognition.
CSCI 103: Introduction to Programming
Basic datatypes, assignments, control statements (if, switch, for, while), input/output (printf, scanf, cin, cout), functions, arrays, structures, recursion, dynamic memory, file handling. Programming in C/C++
CSCI 109: Introduction to Computing
Computing as a discipline, a body of knowledge, and a domain of science/engineering concerned with information and its transformation.
CSCI 104: Data Structures and Object Oriented Design
Introduces the student to standard data structures (linear structures such as linked lists, (balanced) trees, priority queues, and hashtables), using the C++ programming language.
CSCI 170: Discrete Methods in Computer Science
Sets, functions, series. Big-O notation and algorithm analysis. Propositional and first-order logic. Counting and discrete probability. Graphs and basic graph algorithms. Basic number theory.
CSCI 201: Principles in Software Development
Object-oriented paradigm for programming-in-the-large in Java; writing sophisticated concurrent applications with animation and graphic user interfaces; using professional tools on team project.
Upper Division:
CSCI 310: Software Engineering
Introduction to the software engineering process and software lifecycle. Covers project management, requirements, architecture, design, implementation, testing, and maintenance phase activities in team based projects
LING 385: Human Language as Computation
Study of language as a complex natural system that requires elaborate mental computation.
LING 406: Psycholinguistics
Experimental and theoretical aspects of how spoken and written language is produced and understood, learned during childhood, and affected by brain damage.
LING 301: Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology
A survey of topics in phonetics and phonology.
LING 302: Introduction to Syntax and Semantics
A survey of topics in syntax and semantics.
LING 450: New Horizons in Forensic Speaker Identification
Overview of methods used to identify voices on the basis of their characteristic speech patterns.
What do you guys think of the major? Does it sound like it would decently prepare me for my dream career as a computational linguist? In comparison with UCLA’s program, I can instantly see that USC’s program is missing an upper division algorithm course and either a compiler construction or artificial intelligence that are part of UCLA’s ling&cs major. If anyone is familiar with UCLA’s ling&cs major, how do you think it compares to this? I’m still very indecisive about which school to attend, so any help/advice is appreciated.
