Informatics 2A: Processing Formal and Natural Languages (U02599)

? Credit Points : 20 ? SCQF Level : 8 ? Acronym : INF-2-INF2A

This course is about processing natural and artificial languages, building on material covered in Informatics 1 concerning finite state machines and regular expressions. This course will consider how the same models of language can be used to describe and analyse both formal languages (such as programming languages) and natural languages (text and speech). It will include material on formal languages and grammars, probabilistic grammars (including hidden Markov models), semantic analysis and human language processing. Examples will be drawn from computer languages and natural language.

Entry Requirements

? Pre-requisites : Informatics 1A and 1B

Subject Areas

Home subject area

Informatics, (School of Informatics, Schedule O)

Delivery Information

? Normal year taken : 2nd year

? Delivery Period : Semester 1 (Blocks 1-2)

? Contact Teaching Time : 3 hour(s) per week for 11 weeks

First Class Information

Date	Start	End	Room	Area	Additional Information
18/09/2007	16:10	17:00	Lecture Theatre 2, Appleton Tower	Central

All of the following classes

Type	Day	Start	End	Area
Lecture	Tuesday	16:10	17:00	Central
Lecture	Thursday	16:10	17:00	Central
Lecture	Friday	16:10	17:00	Central

Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes

After completing this course successfully, students should be able to:
-Demonstrate knowledge of the relationships between languages, grammars and automata, including the Chomsky hierarchy;
-Demonstrate understanding of regular languages and finite automata;
-Demonstrate understanding of context-free languages and pushdown automata, and how how context-free grammars may be used to model natural language;
-Demonstrate knowledge of top-down and bottom-up parsing algorithms for context-free languages;
-Demonstrate understanding of probabilistic finite state machines and hidden Markov models, including parameter estimation and decoding;
-Demonstrate awareness of probabilistic context-free grammars, and associated parsing algorithms;
-Demonstrate knowledge of issues relating to human language processing.