Module 11223 (2007)
Syllabus page 2007/2008
06-11223
Natural Language Processing & Applications
Level 3/H
Links | Outline | Aims | Outcomes | Prerequisites | Teaching | Assessment | Books | Detailed Syllabus
The Module Description is a strict subset of this Syllabus Page. (The University module description has not yet been checked against the School's.)
Relevant Links
See the NLPA web site for all handouts, more links, etc.
Outline
The module will cover: levels of NLP, speech (phonetics, phonology); grammar (morphology, syntax); meaning (semantics, pragmatics); applications (text-to-speech, speech-to-text, parsing, MT, NL interfaces). The emphasis will be on the background needed to understand practical applications of speech and natural language processing.
Aims
The aims of this module are to:
- introduce students to the basics of natural language processing (including speech), with an emphasis on its practical applications
- cover enough of the linguistic and computing background to allow understanding and evaluation of some applications, such as speech synthesis, speech recognition or machine translation
Learning Outcomes
| On successful completion of this module, the student should be able to: | Assessed by: | |
| 1 | show knowledge and understanding of the core theory underlying speech and natural language processing | Continuous Assessment, Examination |
| 2 | explain its relevance to specific applications | Continuous Assessment, Examination |
| 3 | show an understanding of some current applications of NLP, and evaluate them, demonstrating an appreciation of their strengths and weaknesses | Continuous Assessment, Examination |
Restrictions, Prerequisites and Corequisites
Restrictions:
None
Prerequisites:
None
Knowledge of a programming language is assumed. Neither 06-02495 (Natural Language Processing 1) nor 06-02630 (Software Workshop Prolog) are prerequisites, although there will be a small amount of common material. You will need to be willing to grapple with the complexities of natural language, including learning some basic phonetics and linguistics. A knowledge of another language can help, although it isn't essential.
Co-requisites:
None
Teaching
Teaching Methods:
2 hrs lectures per week plus 6 labs/tutorials
Contact Hours:
Assessment
- Sessional: 1.5 hr examination (80%), continuous assessment (20%).
- Supplementary (where allowed): As the sessional assessment
- The continuous assessment will consist of one essay.
Recommended Books
| Title | Author(s) | Publisher, Date |
| Lecture Notes | Coxhead, P | |
| Foundations of General Linguistics (2nd ed.) | Atkinson, M, Kilby, D A & Roca, I | London: Unwin Hyman, 1988 |
| An Introduction to Language (5th ed.) | Fromkin, V & Rodman, R | Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1993 |
| Speech and Language Processing | Jurafsky, D. & Martin, J.H. | Prentice Hall, 2000 |
| Natural Language Understanding (2nd ed.) | Allen, J | Benjamin/Cummings, 1995 |
| Natural Language Processing for Prolog Programmers | Covington, M A | Prentice-Hall, 1994 |
| Natural language processing in Prolog: an introduction to computational linguistics | Gazdar, G & Mellish, C | Addison-Wesley, 1988 |
Detailed Syllabus
- Introduction. What is 'natural language'? Definitions, 'levels' of language processing, dialects and language changes. 1 week.
- Phonetics & phonology. Linguistic concepts -- phonemes, allophones, feature sets, phonological rules. The phonemes of English ('Standard English English' and 'Standard American English') and their representation in the IPA. Applications in speech synthesis (TTS) and speech recognition (STT). Whole word, grapheme-phoneme-allophone and biphone synthesis techniques. Language models in speech recognition. Introduction to further issues, including stress and intonation. 3 weeks.
- Morphology. Introduction to morphology in both spoken and written language. Definitions -- morpheme, inflectional and derivational morphology. Applications, including spelling checkers. 1 week.
- Syntax. Brief overview of the grammar of English (noun phrase, verb phrase, sentence). Outline of Phase-Structure Grammars using Prolog notation, approaches to generation and parsing (not algorithms). Syntax trees. Application to Machine Translation. 3 weeks.
- Meaning. Semantic features and their applications. 'Case' / thematic roles. The limitations of current approaches to semantic processing -- anaphora, ellipsis, etc. Brief introduction to pragmatics. 3 weeks.
Last updated: 29 Sep 2007
Source file: /internal/modules/COMSCI/2007/xml/11223.xml
Links | Outline | Aims | Outcomes | Prerequisites | Teaching | Assessment | Books | Detailed Syllabus