CSM305
Introduction to
Natural Language Processing
Credits 1
Lectures 14
Assessment Test 75%; Assessment 25%
Tutorials 4
Prerequisites CSI107; CSI108, CSM212
Leads To CSA405
Lecturer Michael Rosner
mros@cs.um.edu.mt

Table of Contents

Course Objectives

This course aims to provide a self-contained introduction to the central issues of Natural Language Processing (NLP), to introduce various practical skills associated with the design and implementation of NLP systems, and to prepare students intending to follow the two-unit advanced course CS405: Advanced Topics in Natural Language Processing. It addresses the following topics:

Lectures

Here you can download the slides in .ps format. To view the slides you can either print them on a PostScript printer or use a ps viewer such as gs or ghostview that can be downloaded from the CSC download area.

No. 2000-01 2001-2 See Also
1.   Introduction; Nature of NLP Computers and Language by Jerry Hobbs
What is Computational Linguistics, by Hans Uszkoreit
2. NLP Classics: ELIZA and SHRDLU History
Machine Translation
Turing Test
ELIZA		 Machine Translation: an Introductory Guide by Doug Arnold
Why Machine Translation is Hard by Martin Kay
Turing Test
Chatterbots
Turing's Paper
3.   SHRDLU
Architecture of NLP Systems		 Origin of "SHRDLU"
Another Account of SHRDLU
Detailed Comments on SHRDLU
4. Introduction to the Syntax of English   Online Linguistics Course (Robert Beard, Bucknell University)
5. Context Free Grammar for English  
6. Grammars and Algorithms, Intro to DCGs  
7. Agreement, Subcategorisation, and Structure with DCGs  
8. Semantics I   Pereira and Shieber Prolog and Natural Language Analysis
sect 4.1.1-4.1.3 (handed out)
9. Semantics II   Covington Chapter 7
10. Parsing Algorithms I   Covington Chapter 6
11. Parsing Algorithms II  

Exercises

Bibliography
  1. James Allen, Natural Language Understanding, Menlo Park: Benjamin Cummings, 1987..
  2. F. Pereira and S. Shieber, Prolog and Natural Language Analysis CSLI lecture Notes No. 10, 1987.
  3. Michael A. Covington, Natural Language Processing for Prolog Programmers, Englewood Cliffs:Prentice Hall, 1994.
  4. L. Sterling and E. Shapiro, The Art of Prolog, Cambridge:MIT Press, ISBN 0-262-19338-8, 1997 (2nd Edition)
  5. C. L. Baker, English Syntax - 2nd Edition, MIT Press, ISBN 0-262-52198-9 560

Old Exam Papers

Online Resources

 [Fri Dec 5 2001]