Foundations of Computational Linguistics: For EFL University Students

Abstract

Foundations of Computational Linguistics: For EFL University Students is a free undergraduate textbook on precise representations and computational analysis of language. Part of the Theoretical Linguistics branch of English Language Studies for EFL University Students, it is designed for adult EFL students who have completed introductory linguistics. No programming experience or special software is required. Students trace procedures by hand using small tables, diagrams, plain-English steps, and secondary-school mathematics. Fifteen chapters connect knowledge-based, statistical, and neural approaches to linguistic questions. Topics include writing systems and tokenization; algorithms, regular expressions, and finite-state automata; computational morphology and transducers; probability and n-gram models; machine learning, text classification, and evaluation; part-of-speech tagging and sequence labeling; constituency and dependency parsing; lexical resources and distributional semantics; compositional meaning and semantic roles; discourse, pragmatics, and dialogue; neural networks, transformers, and large language models; speech processing; machine translation and multilingual processing; and the evidence, limitations, biases, and social consequences of computational models. The complete digital textbook uses central questions, roadmaps, learning outcomes, opening puzzles, five teaching sections per chapter, worked examples, guided activities, independent practice, quizzes, review infographics, and explained answers. Students learn to calculate simple measures, follow analyses, evaluate errors, and distinguish successful task performance from evidence about human language. The book supports flexible classroom teaching and independent study. First Edition, Version 1 (2026). Directed by Munassir Alhamami of King Khalid University, with assistance from ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and NotebookLM. Original content is licensed under CC BY 4.0 except where otherwise stated; credited third-party material retains its stated terms. Series website: https://sites.google.com/view/els4efl/home AI-use disclosure: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and NotebookLM assisted with research, drafting, revision, visual development, and production of this textbook. ChatGPT Images created the front and back covers and the 32 roadmap and infographic images; these images are separate from the precise technical figures described in the credits. The Project Director, Munassir Alhamami, is responsible for the final editorial decisions and released version.