Course goals

This course will introduce students to computational linguistics (CL) and natural language processing (NLP), a field combining insights from linguistics and computer science. The course is concerned with concepts, models, and algorithms to interpret, generate, and learn natural languages, as well as applications of NLP.

We will look at the different levels of linguistic analysis: morphology, morpho-syntax, syntax, and lexical semantics. In so doing, we will move from simple representations of language, such as finite-state techniques and n-gram analysis, to more advanced representations, such as those found in context-free and unification-based parsing. Emphasis will be placed on parsing techniques in this course.

Instructor: Markus Dickinson
Office: Memorial Hall (MM) 317)
Phone: (812) 856-2535
E-mail: md7 AT edu.indiana (flipped around)
Office hours:

M	11:00am-12:00pm
W	1:30-2:30pm
	or by appointment

Meeting time: TR 1:00-2:15pm
Classroom: Lindley Hall (LH) 030
Course website: http://jones.ling.indiana.edu/~mdickinson/08/545/

• I've also added a few pointers to items mentioned in class here

Readings:

• Jurafsky, Daniel and James H. Martin (2000). Speech and Language Processing. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
• Updates to this book are available at: http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~martin/slp2.html .... Some readings may change, depending upon the updates.

• Syntax: here is a short tutorial by Lewis P. Shapiro.

Course requirements:

• Breakdown:

  Participation	10%
  Homeworks	60%	(=8@7.5% each)
  Project	30%

• Homeworks: You will have eight homework assignments throughout the semester, reflecting the material covered in class. You will generally have 1-2 weeks to complete each assignment. Homework assignments are due by the beginning of each class (1:15pm)--you may hand them in or e-mail them to me. You can work together on the homework assignments but write out your own answers. Your homework grade will be based on both quality and effort.

• Project: Towards the end of the semester, you will be required to work on a project covering a topic that we have not had (much) time to discuss in class, e.g., word sense disambiguation, information retrieval, natural language generation, machine translation, text summarization. More information will be given out when the time comes, but you can start thinking about what kinds of topics are interesting to you, if you wish.

• If you feel that I have graded anything incorrectly or improperly, please contact me outside of class. I will be happy to address your concerns.

Grading scale

A	93-100	B+	87-89	C+	77-79	D+	67-69	F	0-59
A-	90-92	B	83-86	C	73-76	D	60-66
		B-	80-82	C-	70-72

Academic Misconduct:

Academic misconduct is not allowed in this course. The Indiana University Code of Student Rights, Responsibilities, and Conduct (http://dsa.indiana.edu/Code/) defines academic misconduct as ``any activity that tends to undermine the academic integrity of the institution . . . Academic misconduct may involve human, hard-copy, or electronic resources . . . Academic misconduct includes, but is not limited to . . . cheating, fabrication, plagiarism, interference, violation of course rules, and facilitating academic misconduct'' (II. G.1-6).

Students with Disabilities:

Students who need an accommodation based on the impact of a disability should contact me to arrange an appointment as soon as possible to discuss the course format, to anticipate needs, and to explore potential accommodations.

I rely on Disability Services for Students for assistance in verifying the need for accommodations and developing accommodation strategies. Students who have not previously contacted Disability Services are encouraged to do so (812-855-7578; http://www.indiana.edu/~iubdss/).

Tentative Schedule:

And here's a page of potentially useful links that we discussed in class.

Disclaimer