Co-listed as 050.626. This course extends the material covered in 050.325 with more advanced topics in morphology, phonology, and phonetics, varying from year to year. This course provides a broad survey of current research on natural language processing. Topics include the recognition and production of words, the planning and production of sentences, and how listeners understand spoken sentences. Hands-on computer simulations of acquisition models using transcripts of spontaneous speech to children as input.
Topics vary from semester to semester.
Co-listed as 050.643. Inference This course introduces logic and probability as languages for representing beliefs. A series of knowledge representation languages are presented. Each language is paired with a reasoning algorithm for computing the consequences of beliefs expressed in it. The ideas of computational effort and expressiveness are made precise.