Computational Linguistics

Spring 2024

Monday 1:30–2:45 p.m.
Wednesday 1:30–4:45 p.m.
New England 105

Professor Gordon

1

Introduction

Jan. 15
Jan. 17 Computers and language

Assignment 0

Core reading:

2

Text and words

Jan. 22 Processing text
Jan. 24 Tokens and normalization

Assignment 1

3

Language models

Jan. 29 Language models
Core reading:
Jan. 31 Model evaluation and smoothing

Assignment 2

4

Machine learning

Feb. 5 Text classification
Recommended background videos:
Core reading:
Feb. 7 Regression

Assignment 3

5

Lexical semantics

Feb. 12 Vector semantics
Core reading:
Feb. 14 Word2vec

Assignment 4

6

Deep learning

Feb. 19 Neural networks
Core reading:
Feb. 21 Deep Learning with PyTorch

Assignment 5

7

Neural language models

Feb. 26 Neural language models
Core reading:
Further exploration:
Feb. 28 Recurrent neural networks

Vote for special topics

8

Spring break

Mar. 4 🐥
Mar. 6 🐝

9

Spring break

Mar. 11 🌧
Mar. 13 🌱

10

Large language models

Mar. 18 Attention and transformers

Sign up for special topic presentations

Mar. 20 From transformers to LLMs

11

Project work and special topics

Mar. 25 Machine translation
Parsing

Project pitch due 11:59 p.m. on Tuesday

Parsing:
Mar. 27 Project work

12

Project work and special topics

Apr. 1 Special topics
Apr. 3 Project work: Peer review

Draft of related work due in class

13

Project work and special topics

Apr. 8 Special topics
Apr. 10 Project work

Related work and methods due 11:59 p.m. on Friday

14

Project work and special topics

Apr. 15 Special topics
Apr. 17 Project presentations

15

Project presentations

Apr. 22 Project presentations
Apr. 24 Project presentations

16

Computational linguistics

Apr. 29 The future of NLP

ECS

Further exploration:
May 1

Rosencrantz: What are you playing at?
Guildenstern: Words, words. They’re all we have to go on.

Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, 1966