CMSC 791A: Intelligent Text Processing

This course will cover the basics of natural language processing and information retrieval.

Instructor

OFFICE: ECS 225H
PHONE: +1 (410) 455-3099
FAX: +1 (410) 455-3969
EMAIL: mayfield@cs.umbc.edu
SNAIL MAIL: Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Dept.// University of Maryland Baltimore County// Baltimore, MD 21228-5398 USA
OFFICE HOURS: Tuesday/Thursday 2:00 to 3:00 p.m. or by appointment.

Time and Location

The course will meet Tuesdays and Thursdays from 5:30 to 6:45 p.m. in the CSEE conference room (ECS 210I).

Textbooks

James Allen, Natural Language Understanding (second edition). Benjamin Cummings, 1995.
William B. Frakes and Ricardo Baeza-Yates, eds., Information Retrieval. Prentice Hall, 1992. Programs from this text are available via ftp from <ftp://ftp.vt.edu/pub/reuse/IR.code/>.

The texts are available in the campus bookstore.

Requirements

There will be two midterm examinations and a final project; each will be worth 1/3 of the grade. The first exam will cover natural language processing, the second, information retrieval. Each student will make at least one presentation to the class on a topic in NLP or IR.

Syllabus

Natural Language Processing

Date	Topics	Readings
30 January	Introduction; Intro to NLP.	Allen Ch. 1
1 February	Intro to IR; English grammar.	Allen Ch. 2, 3.1, 3.2, Handout.
6 February	Constituents; chart parsing.	Allen Ch. (3.3), 3.4.
8 February	Unification grammars.	Allen Ch. 3.8, 4.7, Handout.
13 February	Unification grammars.	Allen Ch. 4.8
15 February	Meaning representation	Allen Ch. 8.1-8.6
20 February	Ambiguity
22 February	Ambiguity resolution	Allen Ch. 6.1, 10.1-10.3
27 February	Project discussion
29 February	Inference and plan recognition	Allen Ch. 15.4-15.7
5 March	Plan recognition
7 March	Exam on NLP

Information Retrieval