Course Description:
Computational Linguistics is the study of human language behaviour and language learning from a computational perspective. This course will explore computational techniques for understanding, translating and producing natural language, and investigate the structure and meaning of sentences and connected discourse. After providing the necessary linguistic background, symbolic (unification-based approaches) and probabilistic (statistical language processing) techniques will be considered. If time permits, Some applications will be discussed, such as the problems of question answering, machine translation, text classification, information extraction, and grammar induction.
Objectives (expected learning outcomes):
Knowledge of the terminology and concepts of computational linguistics. Insight into the possibilities and fundamental limitations of computational linguistics. Insight into the relative advantages and disadvantages of two major approaches to computational linguistics (statistical and unification-based approaches). Understanding of the basic methods and techniques used in computational linguistics. Skills in applying the basic methods and techniques to concrete problems in computational linguistics.