T-538-MALV and T-725-MALV, Natural Language Processing Fall 2008

• Instructors: Hrafn Loftsson and Hannes Högni Vilhjálmsson
• Contact: Office at Kringlan 1, 599 6227, {hrafn, hannes}@
• Classes When: Mondays 8:15-9:50 and Wednesdays 8:15-9:50
• Classes Where: Kringlan 1, Room K-6

The goal of language technology (LT) is to develop systems which allow people to communicate with computers using natural languages. LT is an interdisciplinary field, requiring knowledge from subjects like linguistics, statistics, psychology, engineering and computer science. This course discusses fundamentals of natural language processing (NLP), which is one of the subfields of LT, and introduces research in the field with regard to the Icelandic language. Students acquire understanding of the various stages of NLP, e.g. morphological analysis, part-of-speech tagging, syntactic analysis, semantic analysis, discourse and dialogue. In the course, students work on programming projects related to the aforementioned stages.

The course objectives are that students:

• Know the main methods used in the field of natural language processing
• Are familiar with the main research areas in the field
• Are able to implement a system which processes a natural language

To provide a rich hands-on experience, students will build their own application that relies on NLP over the course of the semester. While the choice of final application is completely in the hands of the students, important NLP components will be built in a series of programming projects that lead up to the final system demonstration. Three homework assignments will also be distributed during the semester to reinforce some of the more theoretical material.

Everything that has to be turned in, including the programming projects, should arrive no later than at 23:59 on the due date, or else incur 10% penalty for each additional day, including weekends and holidays.

General participation in discussions, online and in class, count towards a special participation grade. In addition, M.Sc. level students will be asked to prepare and give one presentation on an existing research paper in the field, which also counts towards their participation grade.

There will be a final written exam. An exam preparation document will be posted here closer to the exam date.

After every lecture, the presenter will post a discussion question on an online forum and the students will be asked to contribute to the discussion of that topic until the following lecture. The discussion takes place on an external forum page at the following address. Note that the students have to register on this forum to post their replies (simply go to the address below to register).