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.
Freeware versions of Prolog are available for most standard personal computers.
Assessment
Dossier of workbook exercises (50%); One hour closed exam (50%).