This interdisciplinary course explores the intersection of linguistic fieldwork and
human-computer interaction, guiding students through the process of documenting an
understudied language and designing a basic dialog flow system for it. Students will engage in
traditional linguistic field methods—elicitation, transcription, grammatical analysis—while also
learning how to translate linguistic insights into computational models for interactive systems.
Working with a native speaker, students will:
(1) Collect and analyze primary linguistic data. (2)Develop a lexicon, analysis of grammatical patterns, and collection of dialog. (3) Identify culturally appropriate communicative patterns
This course emphasizes ethical engagement, community collaboration, and the challenges of
adapting low-resource languages to digital environments. The “deliverables” from this data elicitation and linguistic analysis will be: (1) A database of words and linguistic patterns of the language and (2) Dialog flows and a prototype chatbot
designed and programmed by you using tools from computer science, HCI, and conversational AI.
No prior programming experience is required; students from linguistics, cognitive science,
computer science, and related fields are welcome