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

Date Lecture Reading Assignment
Introduction, N-grams
Th 1/13 1 What is NLP? SLP2 ch. 1 A0: The Basics
Tu 1/18 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
Th 1/20 3 N-gram language models SLP3 3.0–3.4.2; Goldwater probability review through section 4 A0 due
Tu 1/25 4 N-gram language models contd. A1: Language Models
Th 1/27 5 Overview of Linguistics Features English is missing - but most other languages have; SLP2 1.1, SLP3 10.1
Classification
Tu 2/1 6 Classification: naïve Bayes; Noisy Channel Model SLP3 4.0–4.5
Th 2/3 7 Lexical semantics: senses, relations, classes SLP3 18.0-18.3
Fr 2/4 A1 due
Tu 2/8 8 Linear models for classification: features & weights SLP3 5.0–5.2 A2: Perceptron
Th 2/10 9 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)
Tu 2/15 10 Linear models contd.
Sequential Prediction
Th 2/17 11 Parts of speech; Review SLP3 8.0–8.3
F 2/18 A2 due
Tu 2/22 No class: classes follow Monday schedule
Th 2/24 12 POS tagging: HMMs SLP3 8.4.0–8.4.3 Eisenstein Notes, 7.1: Part-of-speech tagging
F 2/25 GRADED QUIZ 1 (See study guide worksheet)
Tu 3/1 13 Algorithms for HMMs (mainly Viterbi); BONUS: Discriminative tagging with the structured perceptron SLP3 8.4.4–8.4.6, Appendix A; BONUS: Eisenstein Notes, 7.5 (no need to read beyond structured perceptron); Neubig slides
Th 3/3 14 Annotation; Universal POS annotation activity (tagset) A3: HMM
M-F 3/7-3/11 No class or office hours: Spring Break
Distributed Representations and Neural Networks
Tu 3/15 15 Distributional representations and similarity SLP3 ch. 6
Th 3/17 16 Deep learning and neural networks SLP3 7.0–7.1, 7.3–7.5
F 3/18 A3 due
Tu 3/22 17 Neural sequence modeling with RNNs (Jakob Prange) SLP3 9.1–9.8 A4: LSTMs
Hierarchical Sentence Structure
Th 3/24 18 English syntax, CFGs SLP3 12.0–12.3, skim 12.4
Tu 3/29 19 Syntax contd.; forming project teams
Th 3/31 20 Syntax, CFGs contd. (P)CFG parsing: Parsing as search; CNF. P0: Submit project team with topic
F 4/1 A4 due
Tu 4/5 21 (P)CFG parsing contd.: CKY walkthrough SLP3 13.0–13.2, Appendix C C.0-C.4 P1: 1-2 page proposal due
Th 4/7 22 (P)CFG parsing contd.: CKY pseudocode, PCFGs, lexicalization A5: Syntax
Th-F 4/7-4/8 P2: groups meet with instructor & TA
Tu 4/12 23 Dependency parsing SLP3 14.0-14.4, 14.6
Th-M 4/14-4/18 No class or office hours: Easter Break
Tu 4/19 24 Semantic role labeling SLP3 15.0, 19.1-19.6
Translation and Sequence-to-Sequence
Th 4/21 25 Statistical machine translation SLP3 10.2–10.9 P3: Progress update, including lit review, due
F 4/22 GRADED QUIZ 2 Study guide to appear
Tu 4/26 26 Statistical machine translation contd.
Tu 4/28 27 Neural sequence-to-sequence models (Luke Gessler)
F 4/29 A5 due
Tu 5/3 28 Last day of class; Context in language processing + Wrap-up
W 5/11 VIRTUAL PROJECT POSTER SESSION (12:30-2:30)
F 5/13 PROJECT REPORT DUE
Visit the GUCL website for NLP talks this semester and beyond!