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My degree so far generally consists of English philology, linguistics and language technology. In this document I will attempt to present my knowledge and skills that I have acquired over the three years I have studied in Helsinki University.
The majority of my studies consist of studies related to English philology. Overall, this covers a wide range of topics from linguistics, literature and culture. Generally, these studies have driven me to understand the diversity of English. In this sense, through linguistic research I have gained a deeper uderstanding into language change. Specifically, I have studied the mechanisms driving the change as well as the current, complex state of English and all of its variant and their usage all over the world. Additionally, I have inspected the cultural and societal state of the US and the UK, as well as the literature that has emerged from these areas over the centuries. With all of this, I have gained a comprehensive understanding of the English language and its current state.
While my major of English philology has covered linguistics in the context of English, I have also studied the optional general linguistics basic and intermediate modules. These minor studies have covered all linguistic subfields of phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics. These courses have also often had theoretical view of how language technology can be applied in these subfields. In this way, rather than studying language typology, I have been more interested in linguistic frameworks that are more relevant in language technology. With these courses, I have gained an understanding as to why and how word embeddings are an effective methodology and familiarized myself with morphological and syntactical tools for processing natural language.
By moving from basic linguistic studies to intermediate courses, I have taken up language technology and natural language processing as my great interests and will pursue these fields in my master’s degree. So far in my bachelor’s degree, I have gotten an overview of many machine learning models and the mathematical theory behind some of them. Also, in terms of mathematics, I have compensated for my short mathematics program in my highschool by learning vector mathematics, set theory and probability distributions from the point of view of a linguist. I have also been introduced to agile methods, deep learning and the linguistic theory behind computational models.
Important courses in English philology: Topics in English Linguistics I & II, Language Variation and Change, Culture and Society, Structures of English, English as Lingua Franca. Important courses in Linguistics: Linguistics in the Digital Age, Reasons and Consequences of Misunderstandings, Phonetics & Phonology, Morphology & Syntax, Semantics & Pragmatics Important courses in Language Technology: Machine Learning for Linguists, Mathematics for Linguists, Building Natural Language Processing Applications, Programming for Linguists, Introduction to Language Technology, Statistics for Linguists
The comprehensive overview of English has guided me towards linguistic descriptivism. In this sense, my approach in situations and projects with language has been to employ theory and methodology to describe and analyze language rather than attempt to regulate it. I believe descriptivism is a very important to me both in terms of approach and as a personal value, as it drives how I approach projects and problem solving.
My linguistics studies have given me theoretical frameworks to employ in my courses and projects concerning language technology and programming. Also, as I have worked mostly with Python, I have gained intermediate experience with it. Additionally, the linguistics and language technology skills I gained have been employed in semantics. For instance, I have created a word sense disambiguation system, worked on a system that automatically detects English puns and lastly, my thesis uses word embeddings to research semantic change. I have also created this website where I cover these projects and my programming skills in more detail.
In this section, I will overview my future plans for the time in the university, how I wish to develop my skills and what I think of employment.
As I’m finishing my Bachelor’s Thesis and the degree, I have come to the conclusion that I will switch from the English programme to the Linguistic Diversity and Digital Humanities master’s programme. This master’s programme will contain a language technology path that I intend to pursue. This is because I feel I have gained enough contextual linguistc knowledge on English as a language, and I wish to complete more studies in language technology and natural language processing. In the future I want to have a deeper understanding of different natural language processing models and be able to employ them in my projects and career. I will keep continuing the focus on semantics, but also explore phonetics and phonology in language technology.
I am starting an internship in a private company, where I get to work with a natural langauge processing researcher from the leading institute of RISE. I will attempt to learn as much as possible before starting my master’s year, in hopes of gaining also knowledge as to what I want to specifically study in my master’s. In this way, I will get to familiarize myself with the industry and start creating contacts. Also, it will be a great asset in knowing better as to which courses to choose for my master’s programme.
In the future, my ideal job description would be a kind of consultant. Specifically, I wish to consult customers on which natural language processing models would be fitting for their product or application. Also, I wish to consult developers about language, as I’m sure many of the employees focused in the coding and mathematics part of natural language processing may have a more naïve view of language. In this sense, I believe my job tasks would not be purely linguistic in nature or exclusively programming. Ideally, I would do both, where I might process linguistic data, analyze it and program models based on it, yet I would leave the more sophisticated mathematics and to full-time programmers. Additionally, I feel it is important for me to bring my humanistic background into the workplace, and generally, be a good person to work with.