684.01 Introduction to Theory-Driven Computational Linguistics U G 5
Prereq: 602.01 and 680, or permission from instructor
Course bulletin description: Symbolic computation applied to the structure of words and sentences, models of morphology and syntax, parsing algorithms. Wi Qtr.
This is the first part of a two quarter sequence introducing computational methods for processing natural language. It is generally offered in the Winter quarter and is aimed at graduate students and advanced undergraduates in linguistics, computer science, or psychology with a background in syntax and formal foundations. The material covered in this course is a prerequisite for the seminars in computational linguistics generally offered in the spring quarter as 884 (and formerly under 795K or 795V).
The course focuses on the questions how to represent syntactic knowledge and which processing regimes can be defined for these representations. More specifically, the course covers the fundamental issues in the following topics:
- finite state automata and transducers,
- formal language theory, computability and complexity,
- recognizers and parsers for context free grammars,
- well-formed substring tables and active charts, and
- processing with complex categories represented by first order terms, feature structures, and typed feature structures
The theoretical material is combined with practical exercises in Prolog implementing grammars and different processing regimes. The necessary Prolog background is introduced as part of the course, so no prior knowledge of Prolog is required.
The course includes regular assignments both on theoretical and on implementation tasks. At the end of the course, students complete a project consisting of building and testing a grammar fragment for a short English text of their choice using a typed-feature language system.
The course is generally offered by Detmar Meurers. More detailed course information and materials for past versions of this course can be found at:
Offered 2007-2008:
Offered 2008-2009 (projected):
Last modified 2006-01-02
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