Lecturer	Stephen Pulman
Degrees	Schedule C1 — Computer Science Part C — Mathematics and Computer Science Schedule C — MSc in Advanced Computer Science MSc by Research
Term	Michaelmas Term 2008  (16 lectures)

Overview

The aim of this series of lectures is to provide an introduction to some of the major topics in computational linguistics. No previous knowledge of linguistics is required.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this lecture series you should understand what the concerns of computational linguists are and be familiar with some of the major topics in the area. You should also be in a position to find out more of the practical details for yourself.

Synopsis

We will try to cover the following topics:

1. Brief introduction to linguistics. 
2. Part of speech tagging: Hidden Markov Models; transformation based learning 
3. Symbolic natural language parsing: shift reduce; charts; packing. 
4. Statistical natural language parsing: chunking; lexicalised grammars. 
5. Semantics and inference: logic, theorem proving and question-answering. 
6. Language generation: sentences from logical forms; planning paragraph length texts, etc. 
7. Dialogue models: speech acts; conversational games. 
8. Putting it all together: (i) a natural language interface (ii) WWW information extraction

Syllabus

We will try to cover the following topics:

1. Brief introduction to linguistics.�
2. Part of speech tagging: Hidden Markov Models; transformation based learning�
3. Symbolic natural language parsing: shift reduce; charts; packing.�
4. Statistical natural language parsing: chunking; lexicalised grammars.�
5. Semantics and inference: logic, theorem proving and question-answering.�
6. Language generation: sentences from logical forms; planning paragraph length texts, etc.�
7. Dialogue models: speech acts; conversational games.�
8. Putting it all together: (i) a natural language interface (ii) WWW information extraction

Reading list

The following textbooks cover much of the material. More detailed references will be given with the lectures. Lecture handouts will be supplied.

• James Allen 1995 Natural Language Understanding, Addison-Wesley Pub Co, 2nd edition.
• An Introduction to Natural Language Processing, Computational Linguistics, and Speech Recognition Daniel Jurafsky and James H. Martin, 2000, Prentice-Hall.

Taking our courses

This form is not to be used by students studying for a degree in the Department of Computer Science, or for Visiting Students who are registered for Computer Science courses

Other matriculated University of Oxford students who are interested in taking this, or other, courses in the Department of Computer Science, must complete this online form by 17.00 on Friday of 0th week of term in which the course is taught. Late requests, and requests sent by email, will not be considered. All requests must be approved by the relevant Computer Science departmental committee and can only be submitted using this form.