Linguistics 575: Computational Linguistics and Linguistic Typology

Spring quarter, 2009

Course Info

Instructor Info

Syllabus

Description

Linguistic typology is the study of the range of variation in structure among human languages and the constraints on that variation. This seminar will look at the relationship between linguistic typology and computational linguistics from two directions, considering on the one hand how computational approaches are used in linguistic typology and on the other how linguistic typology can inform work in computational linguistics/natural language processing.

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

Schedule of Topics and Assignments (may be updated)

NB: I will be out of town for the first class meeting, so we will begin on 4/6. There will be a make-up class meeting scheduled for later in the quarter. Because we are beginning in the second week, students will be expected to prepare the assigned reading ahead of the first actual class meeting.
DateTopicReadingDue
3/31 No class: Instructor out of town.    
4/7 Introduction, organization
What is Typology? Why should computational linguists care?
Bickel 2007, Nichols 2007, Bender 2009  
4/14 Typological databases (Autotyp, WALS) WALS (Presentation guidelines); Bickel and Nichols 2002 (Churng)
KWLH: K and W due
4/21 Morphological typology and practical applications Pirkola 2001 (Hartleben), Kirchhoff and Yang 2005 (Saleem), Alexandrescu and Kirchhoff 2006 (Saleem)  
4/28 ODIN, RiPLeS Lewis 2006 (Jinguji), Lewis and Xia 2008 (Goodman), Lewis and Xia 2009 (Jinguji)  
5/5 Surrey Features Project, GOLD Corbett 2009 (Galperina-Radu), Kibort 2008 (Galperina-Radu), Farrar ms (Evans) Project/paper plan
5/12 LINFER, TypTex Bakker ms (Dougherty), Folch et al 2000 (Dougherty)  
5/19 Bayesian Typology Daumé III and Campbell 2007 (Kane), Daumé III 2009 (Goodman)  
5/26 Grammar Matrix Libraries; Course evals Drellishak forthcoming, Chs 1-3 and 7 (Kane, Churng) Project interim results or paper draft
Make-up class meeting Project/paper presentations    
6/2 Project/paper presentations   KWLH papers due
6/10     Final papers/projects due 5pm

Bibliography

Papers that are available online will be linked to directly. Others will be uploaded to our e-reserves page.


ebender at u dot washington dot edu
Last modified: Wed May 20 21:51:13 PDT 2009