L334: COMPUTATIONAL SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS
Terms taught: 3
Maximum enrolment: 20
Prerequisites
L225 Formal Semantics. (L230 Introduction to Syntactic Theory would be desirable,
but is not required.)
Credits: 20
Aims
The course will consist of an introduction to the computational implementation
of concepts from
natural language syntax and semantics. You will learn how to write computer
programs which
will accept expressions of ordinary English, translate them into a logical representation
and extract
information from a semantic model. You will develop your understanding of the
formal properties
of syntax and semantics and will learn techniques for applying the theoretical
background studied
in syntax and semantics courses.
Contact hours
Four hours per week, for eight weeks. It is important that you gain as much
experience as possible experimenting with Prolog in your own time.
Teaching Programme
The course will start with an introduction to the Prolog (PROgramming in
LOgic) programming
language and will proceed to a discussion of basic issues in computational linguistics
(e.g parsing).
You will learn how to write grammars containing both syntactic and semantic
information to cover
a range of different natural language constructions.
Teaching Material
These will be provided in written form and on the Web.
- Clocksin, W and C Mellish 1984 Programming in Prolog. Springer Verlag,
New York.
- Pereira, F and S Shieber 1987 Prolog for Natural Language Analysis.
Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford CA.
- Sterling L and E Shapiro 1986/1994 The Art of Prolog. MIT Press,
Cambridge MA.
Freeware versions of Prolog are available for most standard
personal computers.
Assessment
Dossier of workbook exercises (50%); One hour closed exam (50%).