Computational Linguistics, Winter 2007/08

Administration

Instructor:: Shuly Wintner, shuly@cs.haifa.ac.il. Office hours: Monday 18:00-19:00, Jacobs 403. Phone: (828)8180.
Times:: Mondays, 14:00-18:00.
Place:: Education 402.
Prerequisites:: Computational models (203.3510). Students without the required background should talk to the instructor prior to registration.
Attendance:: Optional but highly recommended.
Grading:: The final grade will be based on 4-5 home assignments (approximately 33%) and two mid-term exams (approximately 33% each). There will be no final exam.
Mid-term exams:: The first mid-term will cover the first half of the material and will take place on March 17th (during class time). The second mid-term will cover the other half of the material and will take place on April 14th (during class time).
Home assignments:: Approximately r45 home assignments will be handed out during the semester. Submission is mandatory. Homework is to be done independently and plagiarism will not be tolerated.

Content

Textbook:

There is no recommended textbook for this course, but some of the material can be found in Speech and Language Processing, by Daniel Jurafsky and James H. Martin. It's a good book, albeit too shallow sometimes. See a recommended bibliography list.

Syllabus:

Introduction

Applications of natural language processing
The structure of natural languages
Different levels of language understanding: morphology, syntax and semantics
Ambiguity

Morphology

Introduction to morphology: word structure
Inflections and derivations
Finite-state automata
Finite-state transducers

Syntax

Introduction to syntax: the structure of natural languages
Context-free grammars: grammars, forms, derivations, trees, languages
Parsing: top-down, CYK algorithm, Earley algorithm, bottom-up chart parsing
The complexity of natural language
The limitations of CFGs
Unification grammars: feature structures and unification

Empirical approaches to Natural Language Processing

Probabilistic techniques
Applications

Announcements

March 30th, 2008: Challenge 3 corrected. Submit Challenge 3 by April 7th.
March 18th, 2008: Submit Challenge 3 by March 31st.
March 13th, 2008: The first mid-term will take place during class time on Monday the 17th in the Lab, Jacobs 209.
February 11th, 2008: Class is canceled on February 18th. Instead, you are invited to attend CICLing-2008
January 30th, 2008: Schedule updated. For some reading material on the strike, its motivation and its outcome, see here. Or read a short article.
October 20th, 2007: Course web site on-line.

Copies of the slides

Slides by topic: introduction; morphology; finite-state technology, part I; finite-state technology, part II; syntax; context-free grammars; parsing; the complexity of natural languages; unification grammars, part I; unification grammars, part II; unification grammars, part III; empirical methods, part I; empirical methods, part II.

Recitation notes: CFGs; PC_PATR.

Home assignments

Challenge 3. Submit by class time on April 7th.
Challenge 2. Submit by class time on March 17th.
Challenge 1. Submit by class time on March 10th.