This schedule is tentative and subject to change as the semester progresses.

Date Lecture Reading Assignment
Introduction, N-grams
W 1/8 1 What is NLP? SLP2 ch. 1 A0: The Basics
M 1/13 2 Why do we need data?; Basic Text Processing (Regular Expressions, Normalization) Working with text in Python 3, SLP3 2.0–2.3, NLTK Book 3.2–3.10
W 1/15 3 N-gram language models SLP3 3.0–3.4.2; Goldwater probability review through section 4 A0 due
M 1/20 No class or office hours: MLK Day A1: Language Models
W 1/22 4 N-gram language models contd.
F 1/24 A1 due
M 1/27 5 Overview of Linguistics Features English is missing - but most other languages have; SLP2 1.1, 25.1
Classification
W 1/29 6 Classification: naïve Bayes; Noisy Channel Model SLP3 4.0–4.5
F 1/31 A1 due
M 2/3 7 Lexical semantics: senses, relations, classes; Linear models for classification: features & weights Appendix C.0–C.2, 5.0–5.1
W 2/5 8 Linear models for classification: discriminative learning (perceptron, SVMs, MaxEnt) Daumé The Perceptron: 4.0–4.3; SLP3 4.7–4.8, ch. 5 (Further readings are suggested in slides) A2: Perceptron
M 2/10 9 Linear models: discriminative learning (contd.); Parts of speech SLP3 8.0–8.3; Eisenstein Notes, 7.1: Part-of-speech tagging
Sequential Prediction
W 2/12 10 POS tagging: HMMs SLP3 8.4.0–8.4.3, 8.4.9
F 2/14 A2 due
M 2/17 No class or office hours: Presidents' Day (class on Tuesday instead)
Tu 2/18 11 MIDTERM EXAM Study guide
W 2/19 12 Algorithms for HMMs (mainly Viterbi) SLP3 8.4.4–8.4.8, Appendix A A3: HMM
M 2/24 13 Discriminative tagging with the structured perceptron; Annotation Eisenstein Notes, 7.5 (no need to read beyond structured perceptron); Neubig slides
W 2/26 14 Universal POS annotation activity (tagset)
Distributed Representations and Neural Networks
F Su 2/28 3/1 A3 due
M 3/2 15 Distributional representations and similarity SLP3 ch. 6
W 3/4 16 Deep learning and neural networks SLP3 7.0–7.1, 7.3–7.5
M-F 3/9-13 No class or office hours: Spring Break
M 3/16 17 Neural sequence modeling with RNNs (Michael) SLP3 9.1–9.4 A4: LSTMs
Hierarchical Sentence Structure
W 3/18 18 English syntax, CFGs; forming project teams SLP3 12.0–12.3, skim 12.4
F 3/20 P0: Suggest possible topics, form project teams
M 3/23 19 Syntax contd.
W 3/25 20 Syntax, CFGs contd.
F 3/27 A4 due
M 3/30 21 (P)CFG parsing SLP3 13.0–13.2, 14.0–14.4 P1: 1-2 page proposal due
W 4/1 22 (P)CFG parsing contd. A5: Syntax
Th-F 4/2-3 P2: groups meet with instructor & TA
M 4/6 23 Dependency parsing (includes bonus slides not covered in class) SLP3 15.0–15.4.1, 15.6
W 4/8 24 Semantic role labeling SLP3 16.0, ch. 20, pp. 1–10
F 4/10 P3: Progress update, including lit review, due
M 4/9-13 No class or office hours: Easter Break
Translation and Sequence-to-Sequence
W 4/15 25 Statistical machine translation SLP2 25.3–25.9
F 4/17 A5 due
M 4/20 26 Statistical machine translation contd.
W 4/22 27 Neural sequence-to-sequence models (Austin)
M 4/27 28 Last day of class; Context in language processing + Wrap-up
Th 5/7 VIRTUAL PROJECT POSTER SESSION (4:00-6:00 p.m.)
Sa 5/9 PROJECT REPORT DUE
Visit the GUCL website for NLP talks this semester and beyond!