Why Study Natural Language?

Theoretical:

• Understand how language is structured:
  the right way to do linguistics.

• Understand the mental mechanisms necessary to support language use, e.g. memory:
  language as a window on the mind.

Practical:

• Easier communication with computers for humans:
  • Talking is easier than typing

  • Compact communication of complex concepts

• Machine translation

• Someday intelligent computers may use natural language to talk to each other!