CSE 732: Computational Linguistics

Description

Computational techniques for understanding and producing natural language, investigating the structure and meaning of sentences and connected discourse. Symbolic and probabilistic techniques are discussed.

Level, Credits, Class Time Distribution, Prerequisites

Level	Credits	Class Time Distribution	Prerequisites
UG	4	3 cl	630; 625 or Ling 684.01; Ling 201; or permission of instructor

Quarters Offered, General Information, Exclusions, Cross-Listings, etc.

Sp
This course includes programming assignments. Students are expected to be proficient in at least one programming language in order to succeed in the course.

Objectives

Mastery of some current techniques for language processing
Mastery of the application of symbolic and probabilistic data to language processing tasks
Familiarity with building interoperable components for a small language processing agent
Familiarity with the impact of context on language processing

Texts

Natural Language Understanding, James Allen
Speech and Language Processing: An Introduction to Natural Language Processing, Computational Linguistics, and Speech Recognition, Daniel Jurafsky and James Martin

Topics

Number of Hours	Topic
7.5	Course intro, POS tagging and parsing
7.5	Semantic analysis, logical forms
6	Supra-sentential processing: speech acts, rhetorical relations, contextual effects on meaning
6	Generation
3	Exams and review

Representative Lab Assignments

POS tagging using a Brill tagger
Build a chart parser
Build a natural language generator
Generate logical forms within a chart parser
Perform agreement checking in a chart parser

Grading Plan

Labs	30%
Project	20%
Midterm	20%
Final Exam	25%
Class Participation	5%

Relationship to ABET Criterion 3

a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h	i	j	k
	XX	XXX	X					X		XX

Relationship to CSE Program Objectives

1a	1b	1c	2a	2b	2c	3a	3b	4a	4b	5a	5b	5c
X		X	X			XX			X		XX	XX

Preparer Information and Date

Prepared by Donna Byron
Last modified 10/14/2004