UW Professional MS in Computational Linguistics

Approved electives

All students must take one linguistics elective, one compling elective, and either one more compling elective or one 'related field' elective. The following courses are pre-approved as elective in those categories, though to enroll in any non-UWEO course, you may require consent of the instructor as well as an email confirming approval of the program director. If there is a course that you wish to take as an elective which is not already on this list, you may petition to have it approved. In rare cases, students may also petition to take a second course from the 'related fields' in place of the 'compling elective'.

Students are expected to create a coherent program of study with their elective choices.

Note that few (if any) of these courses are offered every quarter, and some are not even offered every year, so plan ahead.

Note re: 400 v. 500-level courses. Certain 400-level linguistics courses (see below) can count as CLMS electives. However, only 500-level courses can count towards PhD requirements, should you choose to continue. Several courses (e.g., 451/551) are offered jointly as 400- and 500-level. In such cases, the course requirements typically differ between the two. Finally, the instructor of a jointly listed 400- and 500-level course may require that all grad students enroll in the 500-level version.

Linguistics electives

• Linguistics 580 (seminar), 4 credit options, taught by non-compling faculty. (Note that most of these have extensive prerequisites. Please discuss your potential participation with the instructor ahead of time. The 2 credit option is intended for PhD students who have passed their general exam and may not count as an elective for CLMS.)
• Ling 447 Psychology of Language I
• Ling 403 Structure of American Sign Language
• Ling 441 Language Processing and Development I
• Ling 444 Philosophy of Langauge-Pragmatics (Phil 444)
• Ling 449 Second-Language Learning
• Ling 454 Methods in Comparative Historical Linguistics
• Ling 455 Areal Linguistics
• Ling 457 Language Development
• Ling 476 Philosophy of Language (Phil 453)
• Ling 532 Sociolinguistics I
• Ling 578 Semantic Theory I
• Ling 579 Semantic Theory II (often the better choice for CLMS)
• Ling 581 Introduction to Morphology
• Ling 507 Syntactic Theory I
• Ling 541 Language Processing and Development I
• Ling 551 Phonology I

Students who have sufficient background from a previous degree may also take the following, upon obtaining the consent of the instructor:

• Ling 411 Native Languages and Language Families of Washington State
• Ling 442 Language Processing and Development II
• Ling 447 Psychology of Language II
• Ling 453 Experimental Phonetics
• Ling 479 Semantics II
• Ling 508 Syntactic Theory II
• Ling 509 Syntactic Theory III
• Ling 533 Topics and Methods in Sociolinguistic Theory
• Ling 552 Phonology II
• Ling 554 Advanced Linguistic Phonetics
• Ling 567 Knowledge Engineering for Natural Language Processing

The following linguistics classes are specifically *NOT* approved for use as electives in the compling MS program:

• Anything below the 400 level not listed above
• Ling 400 (Survey of Linguistic Method and Theory)
• Ling 402 (History of Linguistics)
• Ling 461-463 (Syntax series for undergraduates)
• Ling 471 (Computational Methods in Linguistics)
• Ling 472 (Introduction to Computational Linguistics)
• Ling 473 (Computational Linguistics Fundamentals)
• Ling 521 (R for Linguists)

Finally, the following class may count as a related fields elective, but not as a linguistics elective. Note, too, that this class does not satisfy the probability prereq for the 570 series.

• Ling 520 Introduction to Statistics for Linguists

Compling electives

• Ling 567 Knowledge Engineering for Natural Language Processing
• Ling 575 Topics in Computational Linguistics, taught by CL faculty

Approved electives in related fields

• Computer Science,
• the I-School, and
• Statistics.

• MATH/STAT 394 Probability I
• CSE 373 Data Structures and Algorithms
• CSE 415 Introduction to Artificial Intelligence
• CSE 446 Machine Learning
• CSE 510 Advanced topics in Human-Computer Interaction
• CSE 541 Interactive Learning
• CSE 546 Machine Learning
• CSE 573 Artificial Intelligence I
• CSE 574 Artificial Intelligence II
• EE 596 Introduction to Statistical Learning
• EE 514 Information Theory, Part I
• EE 515 Information Theory, Part II
• LIS 544 Information Retrieval Systems
• MATH 515 Introduction to Optimization

The following classes are specifically *NOT* approved for use as electives in the compling MS program:

• CSE 447/547M (undergrad NLP class, joint with their combined BS/MS program)
• CSE 517 (too much overlap with the 570 sequence in CLMS)