How Linguistics can help to eliminate unnecessary complexity in modern Natural Language Processing

Description

In this talk I present a case study of how performance in a Natural Language Processing task, namely authorship analysis, can be significantly increased if insight and knowledge from (Cognitive) Linguistics is taken in consideration. Even though the field of NLP is now at a stage of wondering to what extent Linguistics is still needed, I make a case that the often quoted statement that "Every time I fire a linguist, the performance of the system goes up" tends to apply to certain strand of Linguistics that do not engage with the study of real-life language usage. Instead, Cognitive Linguistic Usage-Based approaches to the study of language are very compatible with modern advances in NLP. As shown in this case study, the application of Cognitive Linguistics theoretical frameworks can lead to better trade offs between computational complexity and performance, reducing the number of computational steps, processing time, and model parameters.

Period	11 Jun 2024
Event title	Interdisciplinary Perspectives: Bridging Sociological Studies in the Digital Age
Event type	Conference
Location	London, United KingdomShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International