LING 5200 Computational Corpus Linguistics

Fall, 2008

This course is an introduction to the use of corpora for linguistic analysis as a consumer and the techniques in corpus creation as a producer. A major focus is the development of computational skills for corpus manipulation, preparing the student for CSCI 5832 (Natural Language Processing) or CSCI 6302 (Speech Synthesis and Recognition). Prerequisites are: graduate standing in Linguistics or permission of the instructor. Topics covered include:
• the Unix operating system and Unix-based tools such as Emacs
• basic programming skills in the Python programming language
• publically available corpora and corpus annotation
• corpus-based search tools

Co-instructors

• Kevin Bretonnel Cohen, The MITRE Corporation and Center for Computational Pharmacology, firstname.lastname@gmail.com, office hours T/R 2-3 PM, Hellems 160
• Nianwen Xue, Center for Computational Language and Education Research, his.name@colorado.edu. 171G CINC, office hours: Tue/Thu 2-3pm

Course Structure

• Time/Place: Tue/Thur 12:30-1:45, HUMN 1B35 and CINC Classroom
• Textbooks:
  • Required:
    (1) Deborah Ray and Eric Ray, Visual QuickStart Guide: Unix, 3rd edition.
    (2) Python: Mark Lutz and David Ascher, Learning Python, 2nd ed.O'Reilly Media, 2004. (3) NLTK book (online)
  • Recommended:
    (3) David Mertz, Text Processing in Python
• Class Web Page: verbs.colorado.edu/~xuen/teaching/ling5200
• Grading:
  • 5200: 70% Homeworks, projects and Labs, 30% Term Project
  • 6200: 50% Homeworks and Labs, 50% Term Project