T-538-MALV and T-725-MALV, Natural Language Processing Fall 2010

• Instructors: Hrafn Loftsson and Hannes Högni Vilhjálmsson
• Contact: Office at V2.07, 599 6227, {hrafn, hannes}@
• Classes When: Mondays 13:10-14:45 and Thursdays 10:20-11:55
• Classes Where: M1.05

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. 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.

On completing the course, students should:

• know the main methods of processing required for computers to analyse and understand texts in a human language
• understand the strengths and weaknesses of current Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology
• know the main models and algorithms used in NLP, such as in morphological analysis, part-of-speech tagging, parsing, semantic analysis, and discourse and dialogue analysis
• know at least one programming language suitable for text processing
• be able to write simple NLP applications and present their work both orally and in writing
• be able to evaluate the performance/accuracy of NLP systems
• be aware of current research in NLP

The course assessment is as follows:

To provide a rich hands-on experience, students will build their own application (a final project) that relies on NLP over the course of the semester. A number of project proposals will be provided by the instructors, but students are also encourages to come up with their own ideas. Three homework projects/assignments will also be distributed during the semester to reinforce some of the more theoretical material.

Everything that has to be turned in 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. Projects are not accepted if handed in more than two days late.

General participation in discussions in class count towards a special participation grade. In addition, M.Sc. level students need 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 counting 30% towards your grade.

The course has an online discussion forum that we can use in any way we see fit. Note that the students have to register on this forum to post their replies (simply go to the address below to register).