Bryn Mawr College
CMSC 325 Computational Linguistics
Fall 2024
Course Materials
Prof. Deepak Kumar

General Information

Instructor(s)
Deepak Kumar
202 Park Science Building
526-7485
dkumar at brynmawr dot edu
https://cs.brynmawr.edu/~dkumar/

Lecture Hours: Mondays & Wednesdays from 10:10a to 11:30a
Office Hours: Mondays from 1:10 to 2:30p or by appointment.
Lecture Room: Park Room 245
Lab: Mondays from 1:10p to 2:30p in Room 230 Park

Laboratories

Lab Attendance: Attendance in Lab is optional, but will be required during specific weeks. Look for announcements below during the semester. Prof. Kumar will be available in the Lab during all Lab times throughout the semester.

Texts & Software

Main Texts (Required)

  • Speech and Language Processing, 3rd Edition. Pearson-Prentice Hall, forthcoming in 2024-25.
    You cannot purchase this as yet. The authors have made electronic copies of Chapters available: Click here.
  • Natural Language Processing with Python, by Steven Bird, Ewan Klein, and Edward Loper.
    Electronic copies available: Click here.
  • Software: Python and NLTK (we will use Google Colab)
Course Description: Class Number: 2062
Introduction to computational models of understanding and processing human languages. How elements of linguistics, computer science, and artificial intelligence can be combined to help computers process human language and to help linguists understand language through computer models. Topics covered: syntax, semantics, pragmatics, generation and knowledge representation techniques. Prerequisite: CMSC 206 , or H106 and CMSC 231 or permission of instructor. Haverford: Natural Science (NA)
Enrollment Limit; 24.

Syllabus

We will cover the following topics:

Computational Linguistics & Language Processing
Language Formalisms
Chomsky Hierarchy
Regular Expressions
Words: Types & Tokens
Text Normalization
Lemmatization & Stemming
Detecting & Correcting Spelling Errors
Language Models: NGrams
Parts of Speech (POS)
POS Tagging & Tagsets
Rule-based & Stochastic Taggers
Hidden Markov Models for POS Tagging
Named Entity Recognition
Syntax: Formal Grammars (CFGs)
CFGs for English
Phrase Structures
Parsing & Parsing Algorithms
Meaning Representation (FOPC)

Important Dates

September 4  First Class Meeting
October 2  Exam 1
November 11  Exam 2
December 11  Exam 3

Creating a Welcoming Environment

All members of the Instruction Staff are dedicated to the cause of improving diversity, equity, and inclusion in the field of computing, and to supporting the wellness and mental health of our students.

Diversity and Inclusion

It is essential that all members of the course community – the instructor, TAs, and students – work together to create a supportive, inclusive environment that welcomes all students, regardless of their race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexuality, or socioeconomic status. All participants in this course deserve to and should expect to be treated with respect by other members of the community.

Class meetings, lab sessions, office hours, and group working time should be spaces where everyone feels welcome and included. In order to foster a welcoming environment, students of this course are expected to: exercise consideration and respect in their speech and actions; attempt collaboration and consideration, including listening to opposing perspectives and authentically and respectfully raising concerns, before conflict; refrain from demeaning, discriminatory, or harassing behavior and speech.


Assignments

  1. Assignment#1: (Due on Wednesday, September 18): Click here for details.
  2. Assignment#2: (Due on Wednesday, October 2): Click here for details
  3. Assignment#3: (Due on Wednesday, October 23): Click here for details.  
  4. Assignment#4: (Due on Wednesday, November 6): Click here for details.
  5. Assignment#5: (Due on Monday, December 9): Click here for details.

Lectures