Talk: Natural Language Processing to Better Understand Language – and Vice Versa

Abstract

Language is the main pillar of the human experience, and it is central to many fields, from natural language processing (NLP) and (computational) linguistics to psychology, political science, or sociology. The recent explosion in efficiency and effectiveness of Natural Language Processing techniques has made answering some of these questions more accessible. This methodological boon goes both ways and has enabled new theoretical insights. In this talk, I consider both theoretical and practical aspects of the language-NLP relation: we will explore ways how NLP can help us understand language aspects like grounding, but also discuss several cognitively-informed methods that can be directly applied to more practical tasks (e.g., e-commerce).