Reconstruct the Scope, Content and Approaches of Computational Linguistics

Computational linguistics is an interdisciplinary subject of computer science and linguistics, belonging to the category of applied linguistics. Its content is extensive and the boundaries of computational linguistics are vague because some linguists haven't figured out the structure of computer science. Therefore, the scope, content and approaches of computational linguistics are reconstructed. In this paper, we consider that computational linguistics can be explored through theoretical inquiry, data resources, processing algorithms investigation and program implementation, and language practical problems can be handled by means of linguistics interpretation, mathematical models, algorithm expression and program implementation. In theoretical exploration, it is difficult to connect computer science with linguistics directly, so the philosophy and mathematics should be used to build three bridges to open the relationship between linguistics and computer science and technology and the methodology of the entire connectivity is also presented. Finally, several possible research directions are proposed by taking the most subjective field, pragmatics, in linguistics. The computational theory, community detection, compiler and software engineering are connected to pragmatics, waiting to be researched further.