175-410 Computational Linguistics

Two of 175007 Phonology, 175015 Syntax, 175014 Morphology, 175016 Semantics, 175036 Languages of the World or permission of the undergraduate coordinator.

This subject is a introduction to practical techniques and theoretical issues in computational linguistics. It will provide an introduction to the major domains of investigation within the broader field of computational linguistics, with a particular focus on exploring the types of linguistic analysis which can benefit from a computational approach. Topics to be covered include: tagging, parsing, lexicon manipulation, context-free grammars, lexical semantics, phonological analysis, text classification, corpus analysis, concordances, word sense disambiguation, collocation. Corpus resources will be drawn from existing databases of natural language including the Brown corpus, Penn Treebank, WordNet. The subject does not require prior programming knowledge, but some awareness of computing issues would be advantageous.

• be able to explain key concepts in human language description;

• be able to describe the algorithms used by a variety of human language technologies;

• be able to apply problem-solving skills in the design and analysis of multi-component language processing systems;

• be able to create and evaluate computational models of human language.

For 3rd-year students: two assignments of 1000 words 20% (due during the semester), a written report and project of 2000 words 50% (due during the semester) and a 2-hour end of semester examination 30%. For 4th-year students: three assignments of 1500 words 30% (due during the semester), a written report and project of 2500 words 40% (due during the semester) and a 2-hour end of semester examination 30%.

The text below will not be published in time for use in this course, but the Department will provide a package of notes through the University Bookroom, which will include pre-print materials from the book.

• Bird, Klein and Loper, Introduction to Computational Linguistics. Cambridge University Press.