684.03 Introduction to Computational Semantics U G 5
Prereq: Ling 684.01 and 683.01 or permission of the instructor. The course is open to advanced undergraduate and graduate students.
Students will learn how to use Prolog to construct semantic representations for fragments of natural language and perform inference with these representations. At the end of the course, students should be in a good position to appreciate ongoing developments in computational semantics. Assessment will be based primarily on homework assignments.
The course will be based on two books by Patrick Blackburn & Johan Bos, "Representation and Inference for Natural Language: A First Course in Computational Semantics" and "Working with Discourse Representation Theory: An Advanced Course in Computational Semantics" (http://www.cogsci.ed.ac.uk/~jbos/comsem/index.html).
Topics will include: first-order logic as a tool for computational semantics; using the lambda calculus to construct semantic representations, compared to unification-based approaches; handling scope ambiguities with Cooper storage; first-order inference with theorem provers and model builders; constructing Discoure Representation Theory's DRSs (Discourse Representation Structures) and translating them to first-order logic; resolving pronouns to accessible antecedents; and, time permitting, an implementation of van der Sandt's algorithm for presupposition projection and accommodation.
(Note that the official course number will be 795.10 for the course's initial offering in Autumn 2006.)
Offered 2007-2008:
Offered 2008-2009 (projected):
Last modified 2006-05-08
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