Natural Language Processing
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Introduction to Natural Language Processing

CMPSCI 585 — Fall 2007

Description:

Natural Language Processing addresses fundamental questions at the intersection of human languages and computer science. How can computers acquire, comprehend and produce English? How can computational methods give us insight into observed human language phenomena? How can you get a job at Google? In this interdisciplinary introductory course, you will learn how computers can do useful things with human languages, such as translate from French into English, filter junk email, extract social networks from the web, and find the main topics in the day's news. You will also learn about how computational methods can help linguists explain language phenomena, including automatic discovery of different word
senses and phrase structure. Over the past decade, natural language processing has been revolutionized by statistical and probabilistic methods; you will learn about robust approaches to parameter estimation and inference. Our work will include learning new methods, discussions, and hands-on laboratories.

Whether you are interested in the intersection between the humanities and computer science, or you want a job at a Silicon Valley web company, this introductory course will help you on your way.

This course is aimed at CS and Linguistics undergraduates, and Linguistics graduate students. Prerequisites: Either CMPSCI 287 or LINGUIST 401, or graduate standing in Linguistics. (Computer Science graduate students may only do so with permission of the instructor.)