Linguistics 472/CSE 472: Introduction to Computational Linguistics
Autumn 2003

Course Info

Instructor Info

 Emily M. BenderDavid Goss-Grubbs
Office Hours:M 1-3, Denny 109
Th 1-2, Padelford B-201
T 4-5, Denny 109
W 12:30-1:30, Padelford B-203
Phone:616-4963 
Email:ebender at udavidgg at u

Software

In addition to Perl, the following items will be installed in the LLC for our use. Since some students have expressed an interest in installing them on their own computers, I've put the links here, but this is not required.

If you want to do more Perl programming, you probably should use an editor which understands Perl syntax and will indent things properly for you. Emacs is one, and it is available on Dante. You can get emacs for Windows (for free) here. DzSoft makes a shareware Perl editor. (NB - I've never used it, and so don't know how useful it is.)

Finally, here is a quick reference guide to Perl.

Syllabus

Description

The goal of this class is to provide an introduction to computational linguistics---a broad field incorporating research and techniques for processing language with computers at all levels of linguistic structure. Students are expected to have a background in either computer science or linguistics, but not necessarily both. Expect this class to be difficult at times and easy at others. We hope to offer something new and interesting for everyone.

Note: To request academic accommodations due to a disability, please contact Disabled Student Services, 448 Schmitz, 206-543-8924 (V/TTY). If you have a letter from Disabled Student Services indicating that you have a disability which requires academic accommodations, please present the letter to the instructor so we can discuss the accommodations you might need in this class.

Requirements

Students are expected to complete the assigned readings before each lecture. Lecture and section will connect with the readings, but not everything in the readings will be covered in lecture. Homework assignments and exams may nonetheless cover material in the readings not gone over in class.

Grades will be based on homework assignments (45%), the midterm (20%), the final (30%) and class participation (lecture, section and the EPost board) (5%). There will be three options for the final: an exam, a paper, and a project.

Schedule of Topics and Assignments

 
DateTopicReadingDue
9/30 Introduction & overview Ch 1 Regular expression exercises
10/2 Reg exps; FSA Ch 2  
10/7 Morphology & FST Ch 3.1-3.2  
10/9 Morphology & FST Ch 3.3-3.6 Assignment 1
Mean 27.78, Median 29
10/14 CFG; Parsing Ch 10.1-10.2 Choice of final type
10/16 Parsing Ch 10.3-10.6  
10/17 Section: Parsing step-by-step   
10/21 Feature Structures Ch 11.1-11.3 Assignment 2 Answer key
Mean 33.11, Median 33
10/23 Unification Ch 11.4-11.7  
10/28 Catch-up/review  Assignment 3 Answer key
Mean 34.11, Median 37
10/30 Midterm  Answer key
Mean 30.56, Median 31.5
11/4 Probabilistic Parsing Ch 12  
11/6 Probabilistic Parsing Ch 12 Final paper or project topic
11/7 Section: non-probabilistic CKY   revised non-probabilistic
CKY pseudo-code
11/11 Veteran's Day -- no class   
11/13 Reference Resolution Ch 18.1  
11/18 Text Coherence Ch 18.2-18.5 Assignment 4 Answer key
Mean 31.56, Median 34
11/20 (Guest lecture:) Lexical Semantics Ch 16  
11/21 Section: Text Coherence    
11/25 Dialogue & Conversation Agents Ch 19 Assignment 5 Answer key
Mean 30.67, Median 30
11/27 Thanksgiving -- no class   
12/2 Computational Phonology Ch 4.1-4.4 Assignment 6 Answer key
Mean 38.56, Median 40
12/4 Text-to-Speech
Mini-presentations
Ch 4.5-4.9  
12/05 Section: Two-level phonology   Section notes as a Word doc
12/9 Catch-up/review
Course evaluations
  
12/15 Final exam 4:30-6:20pm  Final papers/Final projects