How Algorithms Read Your Resume
Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) don't "read" your resume; they parse it using strict linguistic rules. To get past this digital gatekeeper, you must understand its language of keyword matching, semantic…
Unlocking the Universe of Languages
Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) don't "read" your resume; they parse it using strict linguistic rules. To get past this digital gatekeeper, you must understand its language of keyword matching, semantic…
How can a single misplaced comma bring down an entire software system? This piece explores "error cascades" from a linguistic perspective, showing how the strict, unforgiving grammar of programming languages…
The startlingly human new AI voices are more than a programming feat; they represent a breakthrough in computational prosody. Linguistics teaches us that the "music" of our speechβits rhythm, stress,…
We think of AI models as magical black boxes, but what if they're simply rediscovering the rules of language that humans have known for centuries? This post explores how a…
Did you know that every time you save a file, you're using a form of language? Your computer's folder structure is a surprisingly complex grammatical system, complete with its own…
Author verification is the "Anti-Turing Test"βa field of linguistic forensics that determines if a specific person wrote a given text. Instead of asking "who wrote this?", it uses powerful techniques…
Explore the dramatic schism that split the world of logical languages in two. This post uncovers the story of Dr. James Cooke Brown's Loglan, its 'civil war', and the subsequent…
Teaching a computer to read is simple, but what if the text is a 2,000-year-old, fragmented manuscript written in an archaic script? The digitization of the Dead Sea Scrolls presents…
Discover the Fraser alphabet, a remarkable script for the Lisu language where letters are ingeniously rotated to represent different sounds. Created by missionary James O. Fraser and his collaborators, this…
That familiar red squiggle under a misspelled word isn't magic; it's a marvel of computational linguistics. This post explores the hidden science behind your spell checker, from how it calculates…
AI language models can write poetry and translate languages, but their impressive abilities mask significant linguistic blind spots. Inheriting biases from their training data, these systems often perpetuate gender stereotypes,…
Ever wonder how linguists estimate when languages like Spanish and French split from their common ancestor? The answer lies in a controversial method called glottochronology, which acts like a "carbon…
How do we teach a machine to understand sarcasm or the subtle disappointment in a 'fine' review? This exploration delves into the linguistics of sentiment analysis, revealing how programmers and…
Every time you use a search engine, you're interacting with a sophisticated linguistic machine that does more than just match keywords. This post demystifies the linguistics behind search, explaining concepts…
John Searle's famous "Chinese Room" thought experiment poses a timeless challenge to the idea of a truly thinking machine. By exploring the crucial difference between manipulating linguistic symbols (syntax) and…
What if you could see your own voice? Spectrograms, or "voiceprints," are powerful tools that turn the fleeting sounds of speech into detailed visual maps. By learning to read these…
Before 'cut and paste' existed on a screen, there was the Friden Flexowriter, a revolutionary machine that used punched paper tape to edit text. Discover the story of this forgotten…
Before any AI can understand language, it must first shatter sentences into pieces through a process called tokenization. This crucial first step is far more complex than it seems, presenting…
When two AI systems are tasked to work together, they often develop their own optimized, private language to communicate more efficientlyβa language we can't understand. This phenomenon of emergent AI…
** Before an AI can understand language, a human has to teach it. This work is done by linguistic annotators, the unsung heroes who manually tag text with grammatical and…