Computational Linguistics, also known as Natural Language Processing, seeks to describe algorithms that produce, understand, and learn human languages. It is concerned both with the science and technology of human language, and indeed the two go hand in hand.

There is a large and increasing variety of natural language technologies, ranging from speech recognition and spoken language dialogue systems to machine translation to information extraction and question answering from the Web. If there is any one vision that unifies them, it is perhaps the development of an intelligent agent with human-level language skills - an agent like HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The corresponding scientific aim is the understanding of how it is in principle possible to do the things that humans do with language - speaking, reading, understanding, learning, translating - and the development of mathematical, algorithmic, and data-collection techniques that will enable us to acquire that understanding.

The Computational Linguistics Group is an informal cooperative enterprise involving faculty from the following units:

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, especially the AI Laboratory.
• The School of Information
• The Department of Linguistics

The following links provide additional information about various aspects of study and research in Computational Linguistics at the University of Michigan:

• What is Computational Linguistics?
  
• Graduate Study
  
• Faculty
  
• Curriculum
  
• Clair research group