Introduction to Natural Language Processing (CS 2731 / ISSP 2230), Fall 2004 |
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| Time: | Tu Th 4:00-5:15 | Place | 5313 Sennott Square (NOTE CHANGE!) |
| Professor: | Diane Litman | Office Hours: | Tu Th 2-4 (5105 Sennott Square) |
| Email: | litman at cs | Phone: | 412-624-8838 (Sennott Square); 412-624-1261 (LRDC) |
| TA: | Ali Alanjawi | Office Hours: | M/T/W 2-4 (5404 Sennott Square) |
| Email: | alanjawi at cs | Phone: | 412-624-1185 |
This course provides an introduction to the theory and practice of natural language processing (NLP) - the creation of computer programs that can understand, generate, and learn natural language. We will use natural language understanding as a vehicle to introduce the three major subfields of NLP: syntax (which concerns itself with determining the structure of a sentence), semantics (which concerns itself with determining the explicit meaning of a single sentence), and pragmatics (which concerns itself with deriving the implicit meaning of a sentence when it is used in a specific discourse context). The course will introduce both knowledge-based and statistical approaches to NLP, illustrate the use of NLP techniques and tools in a variety of application areas, and provide insight into many open research problems.
Prerequisites: CS 1501
Speech and Language Processing by Jurafsky and Martin (errata).
For a selection of topics, we will also read some current research papers. All students will choose a paper, and will lead the portion of class allotted to the discussion of that paper; the remaining students will email questions, which will form the basis of the discussion.
Concepts taught in class will be reinforced with assignments (both problem sets and programming), a project, and exams. Each student will also lead a paper discussion, and will send email questions as well as participate in the other discussions.
Grade Basis: homeworks (35%), project (25%), exams (35%), leading discussion & class participation (5%).
Late Penalty: For assignments that may be accepted late, the penalty is 10% per day up to 5 days including Saturday, Sunday, and holidays. Assignments are due at the start of class.
This course page HAS BEEN SUPERSEDED by Pitt's Blackboard system. To take this class, you must have a Pitt account and use (or forward) your official Pitt email!!
Join the Natural Language Processing Laboratory!
| Topics | Reading |
| Knowledge of Language | Ch 1 |
| Regular Expressions and Automata | Ch 2 |
| Morphology and Finite State Transducers | Ch 3 |
| N-Grams | Ch 6 |
| Part of Speech Tagging | Ch 8 |
| Context-Free Grammars | Ch 9 |
| Parsing with CFGs | Ch 10 |
| Lexicalized and Probabilistic Parsing | Ch 12 |
| Lexical Semantics | Ch 16 |
| Word Sense Disambiguation | Ch 17 |
| Representing Meaning | Ch 14 |
| Semantic Analysis | Ch 15 |
| Discourse | Ch 18 |
| Dialogue and Conversational Agents | Ch 19 |
| TBA (depending on time and interests) | TBA |
Assignments must be your own individual work, unless explicitly stated otherwise. You must do the work without undue help from other people, and you must not present material from resources such as the Web, books, papers, code listings, and other people as your own. You may talk to each other about concepts and techniques, but you must not discuss specific solutions or approaches to solutions. Copying or paraphrasing someone's work, or permitting your own work to be copied or paraphrased, even in part, is not allowed and will result in an automatic grade of 0 for the assignment.
If you have a disability for which you are or may be requesting an accommodation, you are encouraged to contact both your instructor and Disability Resources and Services, 216 William Pitt Union, (412) 648-7890/(412) 383-7355 (TTY), as early as possible in the term. DRS will verify your disability and determine reasonable accomodations for this course.