Course Overview for CIS 788R04: Language in Context, Autumn 2004

Instructor

Dr. Donna K. Byron
Office: 583 Dreese Labs
Office Hours: Monday 1:00 - 3:30, Wednesday 4:30-6:00, other times by appointment
Office Phone: 614-292-6370
Website: www.cse.ohio-state.edu\~dbyron

Meetings

The class meets Tuesdays and Thursdays from 1:30 - 2:45 in 314 Bolz.

Objectives

The goal of this course is to explore how to build language interpretation in a software agent that is engaged in a task with a human user, when that agent can draw on multiple forms of context to constrain meaning. The basic question we will explore is how to use the spatial configuration, the user's gesture or eyegaze, input from visual or location sensors, etc. to link language to the objects of interest in the task. This processing is needed for natural language interfaces in embodied agents such as robots or graphical characters. I am particularly interested in attempting to find new AI techniques that can be applied to this task, since the methods defined in the past have been largely heuristically-based, as you will see in the readings.

Readings

There is no book for this course. The course will be restricted to discussions of task-oriented language. I have drawn up an initial schedule of assigned readings , but this list can be modified based on the interests of people in the class. The readings build from simple models of context using only the discourse as a context, and gradually add on additional information from 2D to 3D graphics to robots traversing a real space.

Course Project

The second half of the quarter will focus on a team project. The project description is available here

Pre-requisites

This course will assume some very basic familiarity with Artificial Intelligence. Students are not expected to have any previous coursework on linguistics. Software development will not be required, although a basic familiarity with data structures and algorithmic thinking will be helpful.

Assignments

Students taking this course for credit will be required to do the following:
Homework assignment: There will be a small annotation (language analysis) assignment in the first 3 weeks of the class 20%
Lead one day's class discussion on the assigned reading for that day. To receive full credit, you must meet with me prior to the class period (at least the day before) to go over your presentation, and you must prepare a handout for the other students that summarizes the main points of the paper 30%
In-Class Participation: class attendance 10%
In-Class Preparation: Before each class meeting (by 10PM of the day before), you must email to me and the presenter a question you have about the assigned reading 10%
Group Project: I will form teams of 2 students each. Each team will be assigned a particular aspect of context to analyze in a transcript of situated language. The project does not need to result in working software, it can involve pencil-and-paper analysis of the language in the transcript. More info about the project will be discussed in class. 30%

Data and Resources

Lexicon of Linguistics Terms
ACL anthology Online papers from the CL journal since 1980, all ACL conferences, and most ACL workshops or other ACL-sponsored meetings
Comp Ling email discussion group signup page (for Clippers meeting announcements)
donna byron
Last modified: Tue Oct 26 13:06:04 EDT 2004