The University of Malta’s Institute of Linguistics (IoL) has developed a new degree programme in an area of research concerned with the relationship between natural language and computers.

IoL chairman Ray Fabri, IoL members Albert Gatt and Alexandra Vella, and Mike Rosner from the Department of Intelligent Computer Systems, explained that there is a widespread consensus that not only do computer systems need to be ‘intelligent’ insofar as they can resolve problems quickly and efficiently, but that they also need to be intuitive to use and easy to communicate with.

The technology of the future will naturalise the interface between humans and machines. There already is an explosion of new technologies – whether on desktops or smart phones and other handheld devices – which have vastly improved the efficiency and comfort with which we can execute tasks and retrieve information.

The next frontier is natural language: contemporary research in both academia and industry is seeking novel ways of making machines interact with humans using the medium that comes to us most naturally: languages like English and Maltese.

Linguistics is the study of language, and language is becoming an increasingly central component of modern technology.

For humans, language is the communicative medium of choice, and by this, we mean language in its broadest sense, encompassing not only the capacity to produce and understand sentences, but also other aspects of communication, like gesture, emotion and facial expression. Read more.

See: The Malta Independent Online