  Language understanding is a key scientific issue in the fields of cognitive
and computer science. However, the two disciplines differ substantially in the
specific research questions. Cognitive science focuses on analyzing the
specific mechanism of the brain and investigating the brain's response to
language; few studies have examined the brain's language system as a whole. By
contrast, computer scientists focus on the efficiency of practical applications
when choosing research questions but may ignore the most essential laws of
language. Given these differences, can a combination of the disciplines offer
new insights for building intelligent language models and studying language
cognitive mechanisms? In the following text, we first review the research
questions, history, and methods of language understanding in cognitive and
computer science, focusing on the current progress and challenges. We then
compare and contrast the research of language understanding in cognitive and
computer sciences. Finally, we review existing work that combines insights from
language cognition and language computation and offer prospects for future
development trends.
