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#letterHeader(
  myAddress: [730030 , China],
  recipientName: [Saarland University],
  recipientAddress: [Department of Language Science and Technology],
  date: [01/01/2024],
  subject: "Subject: Personal Statement for LST program"
)

Dear Admissions Committee,

I am excited to submit my application for the Language
Science and Technology M.Sc. program at Saarland University. My name is <NAME> , a graduate from the School of Chinese Language
and Literature at Wuhan University. Herein, I
aim to demonstrate to the committee that I am a qualified candidate for
this program.



As a child yearning to be a scientist, my unintentional choice of
humanities back in high school created a seemingly insurmountable gap
between me and science. My fascination with computer tech, historical
scientific breakthroughs, reading about scientists, became merely
leisure pursuits.

Following my major in high school, I chose to study Chinese Language
and Literature at university, considered a conventional humanities major.
Surprisingly, through this path, I stumbled upon Linguistics---a field
nestled under my major due to China's education structure. After a few
basic linguistics courses, I realized its strong tether to the science
I'd always admired. As I delved deeper, my fascination with Linguistics
as a science overshadowed the less appealing literature courses. This
dichotomy reinforced my allegiance to linguistics--the more I wrestled
with the literature, the more I felt drawn to linguistics.

In the labyrinth of humanities, I'm grateful to linguistics for leading
me back to my original desire---science.


In my academic journey, I noticed that modern linguistics seems detached from the wider scientific landscape. There was a time when the prosperity of linguistics benefited from cross-pollination with various scientific disciplines. The influence of Saussure's structuralist thinking across many disciplines, as well as Noam Chomsky's use of formal methods, bears witness to this interwoven history.

Nevertheless, I doubt if today's linguistics keeps pace with the
scientific frontier. Progress in cognitive understanding of linguistic
phenomena and neuroscience's tracking of physiological language
responses are advancing swiftly. Moreover, Natural Language Processing's
achievements, particularly underlined by OpenAI's GPT, herald a new era
in linguistics. These AI systems exemplify an "intelligence" with
non-human physiological structures mastering human language.
Unfortunately, traditional linguistics, often unable to understand or
even recognize these advancements, risks stagnation.

Gradually, I discovered other dimensions to linguistics: Computational
Linguistics, Cognitive Neurolinguistics, and Quantitative Linguistics.
Computer science and cognitive neuroscience serve as exemplary
scientific frameworks, worth emulating. Statistical approaches offered
by quantitative linguistics seem promising, particularly given the
inherent variability and complexity of linguistic systems.

After hearing about these disciplines, I began to approach them and learn relevant knowledge and methods. This process was not easy because the teachers at school could hardly offer the kind of hand-holding teaching as when imparting traditional linguistic knowledge. I had to search for papers myself, personally try out new programs and codes, and seek help online based on the error messages of the code. Fortunately, I have a strong learning ability, and I am indeed talented in these computer-related content.

I proceeded with self-learning, rummaging for relevant papers,
experimenting with new programs and adjusting code based on arising
errors. During my junior year, I spearheaded the utilization of an
underused eye-tracking device in our school. Dedicating a whole term, I
mastered its operation, from design to data visualization. I completed a
research study on linguistic landscapes using eye-tracking,
submitted and awaiting review.

In my senior year, I undertook a graduation thesis to analyze network language differences utilizing quantitative linguistic text features. This challenged my technical abilities as I had little hands-on programming experience. Moreover, I had never engaged in package or environment management, and my understanding of version control was limited to creating new Notepad files. While working on the thesis, I substantially improved my skills. I learned to use Anaconda for Python environment management, IDE's for efficient code writing and running, and Git for version control. My successful completion of the project, which involved a quantitative feature analysis of a self-crawled corpus, revealed that text feature differences across various Chinese Internet platforms are more pronounced than those within the same platform.

Post-graduation, I increasingly applied my skills towards self-interest
projects. I bought a VPS and deployed multiple services like personal
academic homepages, blogs, RSS and network disk services, and developed
mirror sites. I also continued working on my linguistic landscape paper,
acquainting myself with LaTex and paper submission procedures. My recent
work involves analyzing generated language models (LLMs) for differences
from human language. Preliminary findings suggest that a significant
portion of the LLM corpus doesn't align with Zipf's law, potentially a
captivating discovery.



Following my experiences, my future ambitions revolve around further
exploring the intersections of Computational Linguistics, Cognitive
Neurolinguistics, and Quantitative Linguistics. I seek deeper
understanding and innovative insights from this interdisciplinary
perspective.

Earlier, I alluded to the Bourbaki school---The collective represented
by the pseudonym <NAME> underscores the essence of scientific
collaboration. As science has grown complex, no longer can a single
mind, such as <NAME>'s, galvanize a new period. Progress
dictates interdisciplinary cooperation.

I aspire to be the Nicolas Bourbaki of this era.In the realm of interdisciplinary scientific cooperation, my aim is to
act as a bridge connecting disparate disciplines, and with my team,
accomplish a profound impact akin to Nicolas Bourbaki's influence on
mathematics. I hope we can reshape linguistics into a field deeply
rooted in statistics, capable of fluid interactions with other
scientific domains, and fostering mutual insights. Linguistics needs its
Nicolas Bourbaki, and I aim to play a part in that.

The LST program perfectly fits my needs, not only with fruitful outcomes
in the field of computational linguistics but also many research groups
involve psycholinguistics. I have seen some groups doing eye-tracking
research---if they are also using the EyeLink system, I could almost
immediately participate in these studies. In addition, I believe there
aren't many students with my background from the humanities. The LST
program, organized in small learning groups, allows me to discuss a more personalized study plan with my mentors.


I believe I meet your requirements for master's applicants, and I am
eager to get one step closer to my dream in the LST program at Saarland
University.

Sincerely,

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