Software
This software is available in the Treehouse. You can also install
it on your home machines, but you'll need to be running linux. If
you don't already have a linux machine, we suggest Ubuntu+LKB.
Instructor Info
- Emily M. Bender
- Office/Lab Hours: (most) Thursdays 10:30-11:30, (most) Fridays 9-10 & by appointment
- Office: GUG 418-B (If I'm not in my office, check the
Treehouse.)
- Phone: 543-6914 (nb: I pick up email before I pick up voice mail)
- Email: ebender at uw
Links
Syllabus
Description
Natural language processing (NLP) enables computers to make use of
data represented in human language (including the vast quantities of
data available on the web) and to interact with computers on human terms.
Applications from machine translation to speech recognition and
web-based information retrieval demand both precision and robustness
from NLP technology. Meetings these demands will require better
hand-built grammars of human languages combined with sophisticated
statistical processing methods. This class focuses on the
implementation of linguistic grammars, drawing on a combination of
sound grammatical theory and engineering skills.
Class meetings will alternate between lectures and discussion sessions.
We will cover the implementation of constraints in morphology, syntax
and semantics within a unification-based lexicalist framework of grammar.
Weekly exercises will focus on building up an implemented grammar
for a language of your choice (everyone must work on a different language,
so be prepared to work with a language you don't know well!), based on
the LinGO Grammar Matrix.
At the end of the quarter, we will use the various grammars in a machine
translation task.
Prerequisites: Linguistics 566 or equivalent. No programming
experience is required.
Note: To request academic accommodations due to a
disability, please contact Disabled Student Services, 448 Schmitz,
206-543-8924 (V/TTY). If you have a letter from Disabled Student
Services indicating that you have a disability which requires academic
accommodations, please present the letter to the instructor so we can
discuss the accommodations you might need in this class.
Requirements
Weekly lab exercises, typically assigned on Mondays and due by
Friday night. Course time on Thursdays will be used for discussion of
the exercises, so please work on them ahead of time and bring
questions. Lab exercises will require
write-ups to explain the phenomena as manifested in your language and
how you implemented your analysis. Active class participation will be
viewed favorably when it comes to grading.
Everyone will complete Lab 1 individually, but students are be
expected to work in pairs starting with Lab 2. Partners will
alternate doing the write up portion of the lab, and have the grades
for the labs where they did the write up weighted more heavily in
their final course grade.
Lab exercises are to be turned in via Catalyst CollectIt
Late homework policy
- Homework is due at 11pm on the date posted. (NB: I will stop answering
questions on GoPost by 5 or 6pm.)
- Unless you've made prior arrangements with me, homework
turned in within one day of the due date will receive 80% credit, two
days 70% credit. No credit after that, though I will still be willing
to look it over and make comments.
- By prior arrangements, I mean
contacting me no later than the day before the homework is due (i.e.,
Sunday for homework due Monday) with the reason you feel you can't
complete your homework on time. At that time, I will decide whether
or not to grant an extension, and for how long.
Schedule of Topics and Assignments
Under construction---will be updated.
All course recordings will be posted on our common view page. If I'm slow to make them available there, please ping me over GoPost.
| Dates | Lecture | Lab | Due date | Reading |
|
1/5, 1/7 |
Overview, Introduction
LKB Formalism
|
Lab 1: Getting to know the LKB and the Grammar Matrix; Choose language | 1/9 |
Ch 1-3 |
|
1/12, 1/14 |
Testsuites, [incr tsdb()] |
Lab 2: Testsuites/customization I:
Word order,
person/number/gender,
pronouns,
case,
the rest of the NP,
basic lexicon (full form) |
1/16 | Ch 4, 5
Bender et al 2011 (in course CommonView) |
|
1/19, 1/21 |
The Grammar Matrix: Motivations, technical details
Morphotactics in the Grammar Matrix |
Lab 3: Testsuites/customization II:
Tense/aspect,
agreement,
other required affixes,
negation,
argument optionality,
possessives
|
1/23 | Bender et al 2010 (in CommonView); Goodman 2013 |
|
1/26, 1/28 |
Minimal Recursion Semantics |
Lab 4: Testsuites/customization III:
Matrix yes-no questions,
matrix wh- questions,
coordination,
modification,
non-verbal predicates,
embedded clauses |
1/30 | Copestake, Flickinger, Pollard, and Sag, 2005 (esp. Sec 3) |
|
2/2, 2/4 |
Modification, Discourse Status, Argument Optionality, Possessives; Precision grammars and corpus data |
Lab 5: Test corpus, modification, possessives, argument optionality |
2/6 | Borthen and Haugereid 2005, available under Files on the course CommonView (Research on Language and Computation 3(2):221-246)
(Optional: Baldwin et al 2005) |
|
2/9, 2/11 |
Clause types, illocutionary force, non-verbal predicates |
Lab 6: Polar questions, embedded clauses, non-verbal predicates | 2/13 | |
|
2/16, 2/18 |
Wh- questions |
Lab 7: negation
wh-questions
One corpus sentence | 2/20 | |
|
2/23, 2/25 |
VPM, The LOGON MT architecture |
Lab 8: VPM, One more corpus sentence, First translation |
2/27 | |
|
3/1, 3/3 |
MT continued |
Lab 9: Grammar clean up; Transfer rules |
3/6 | Oepen et al 2007 |
|
3/8, 3/10 |
The Grammar Matrix: Future directions |
Machine Translation Extravaganza
Course evals | Nope | |
ebender at u dot washington dot edu
Last modified: 3/8/16