statement of purpose which probably isn't what they had in mind but at least i wrote something

How do we, as a society determine the intelligence of other things, living and nonliving? The main criterion seems to be their ability to communicate with us. And the most frequently used form of communication is language whether spoken, written, or signed. Thus it appears that as the Turing test would have us believe, only by communicating with a machine and believing its responses to be human can a machine demonstrate intelligence. Though it may be possibly to create A.I. constructions, no one will ever know of their existence if they cannot translate that intelligence to another form. I admit, the field of computational linguistics sparked my interest because I am a science-fiction fan, and perhaps I will not be able to make a computer "talk", but just the possibility is enough to fascinate me. I know that there are other applications for linguistics, computational and otherwise, but the potential development of A.I. is the one that calls out screaming from the rooftops "Here I am, pick me! Pick me!". While taking several computer science courses, each new data structure I learned started the wheels in my head turning, How could I adapt this to make a translation program?, How could I combine these to generate sentences? By the same token, when learning about how the brain processes language, I'd often find myself wondering What sort of algorithm could I use to accomplish that process on a computer? The intertwining components of computer science, linguistics, and brain and cognitive science, allow for untold possibilities which I would like to be given the opportunity to explore.