Syntactic parsing (advanced level)

  • Course date: Spring 2024
  • Teachers:
    • Sara Stymne: course coordinator, examiner, lectures, seminars, supervision

News

  • 24-02-25: The lab session on Monday Feb. 26 is cancelled. There will be a shorter lab session on Wednesday Feb. 28 9-10 (before the lecture).
  • 24-02-21: The deadline for assignment 3 has been moved to March 11. (This was a move from March 4, due to student requests, since there was an erroneous deadline on the assignment page. Note that it is still recommended to do the assignment by March 4 in order to have enough time for your projects.)
  • 24-02-19: Note tha the final semianr has been moved to Monday March 25, 9-12
  • 24-02-05: The instructions for assignment 3 and the project are now avaialble. Not ethat the date for the project semianr will be moved, tentatively to the week March 25–29.
  • 24-02-01: The groups for seminar 1 are now posted on the seminar page.
  • 24-01-17: Note that the lecture on January 31 has been moved from 10-12 to 8-10. It will now be in 16-0054.
  • 23-12-11: First tentative version of the course web page.

Contents

The course gives an introduction to methods and algorithms used in automatic syntactic analysis and provides the skills that are required to apply and implement practical systems based on these methods. The course covers both phrase structure analysis and dependency analysis.

Examination 5LN713

The course is examined by three assignments, two literature seminars, and a project.
  1. Assignment 1: PCFG parsing Implement the CKY parsing algorithm and evaluate the parser using treebank data. Detailed description Deadline: 2024-02-09.
  2. Assignment 2: Dependency parsing algorithms Implement a transition-based parsing algorithm and evaluate the parser using treebank data. Detailed description Deadline: 2024-02-22.
  3. Assignment 3: Cross-lingual dependency parsing Try out and evaluate a neural dependency parser in a cross-lingual low-resource setting. Detailed description Deadline: 2024-03-11.
    (This was a move from March 4, due to student requests, since there was an erroneous deadline on the assignment page. Note that it is still recommended to do the assignment by March 4 in order to have enough time for your projects.)
  4. Literature seminar: Actively participate in two literature seminars. Detailed description
  5. Project Detailed description
    Deadline for defining a project: 2024-02-26.
    Seminar discussion of the projects: 2024-03-25
    Deadline for handing in the project report: 2024-03-22.

In order to pass the course, a student must actively attend the seminars, pass all assignments and the project with a passing grade. In order to pass the course with distinction (Väl godkänt), a student must pass either all three assignments with distinction or pass the project and at least one of the assignment with distinction. The seminars are not graded.

Deadlines

Each assignment has a deadline, see above. Each deadline is at the respective date at 23.59, and all submissions should be done through Studium. In case you fail to meet the deadline, you have the chance to re-submit the assignment for a second deadline, which for all assignments is 2024-04-01. For the project and seminar reports (for those missing a seminar), the second deadline is 2024-04-15.

Also, see Examination and continued studies for further details of the examination rules for the master program.

In case a student hands in an assignment/report that is close to passing, an additional chance of quick resubmission will be given two weeks after the student receives this feedback. For the assignments, where a VG grade requires doing an additional task, we will grant a second opportunity to reach a VG grade for students that perform an extra task for the first deadline, and who are very close to a VG then. If this is the case for you, you will be notified when you get your feedback on the task.

Assignments will only be graded in connection with each deadline. In case of special circumstances, please contact your teacher BEFORE the deadline it concerns.

Since this is the last time this course will be given, we will offer a number of extra examination opportunities, for a period after the course. The exact details and deadlines for those opportunities will be posted here.

Seminars

There are two literature seminars during the course. In order to get a passing grade on the seminars you need to prepare for them, and be active during the seminar.

The two seminars are obligatory. If you miss a seminar, or do not participate actively, you will have to do a complementary task. Contact Sara if this is the case. The deadline for such a report is 2024-03-22.

Literature

Daniel Jurafsky and James H. Martin. Speech and Language Processing: An Introduction to Natural Language Processing, Computational Linguistics, and Speech Recognition. Third Edition, Pearson Education, 2019. Available online https://web.stanford.edu/~jurafsky/slp3/ Chapters 17-18

Sandra Kübler, Ryan McDonald, and Joakim Nivre. Dependency Parsing. Morgan and Claypool, 2009. (Electronic edition)

Two research articles on parsing to be discussed during the literature seminars):

For some of the course themes, there are lecture notes by Joakim Nivre, available in Studium.

Additional reading is required. The following is a sample:

Schedule

All lectures will be mainly held on Campus. However, there will also be a Zoom session (see Studium for the link), for those who are unable to join on Campus. Note that the classroom white board may be used, though, which might not be fully accessible by Zoom. In addition to Campus lectures, there will be recorded lectures available through Studium. For each set of recordings there will also be a Campus session, where the main points will be summarized, and we will work on exercises.

The seminars and supervision sessions will be held on Campus.

  • Monday 2024-01-15 (13–15) Sara
    16-2044
    Introduction
    Reading: J&M 17.1-17.5.

  • Friday 2024-01-19 (9–11) Sara
    16-2044
    Please watch recorded lectures first.
    The CKY algorithm
    Exercise Reading: J&M 17.6

  • Week January 22-26, 2024
    Supervision for assignment 1 available via email

  • Monday 2024-01-29 (13–15) Sara
    Chomsky+Turing
    Please watch recorded lecture first.
    Exercise
    13-14: Short lecture on parser evaluation + treebank grammars
    14-15: Supervision, assignment 1

  • Wednesday 2024-01-31 8-10 (10–12) Sara
    16-0054 16-2044
    Please watch recorded lecture first.
    Exercise
    Dependency parsing and Transition-based algorithms
    Reading: KMN 1-3

  • Monday 2024-02-05 (13–15) Sara
    Chomsky, Turing
    Supervision, assignment 1

  • Wednesday 2024-02-07 (times for each group TBD, 9-12) Sara
    2-0025
    Literature seminar 1
    Reading: Recurrent Neural Network Grammars

  • Monday 2024-02-12 (13–15) Sara
    Chomsky, Turing
    supervision, assignment 2

  • Wednesday 2024-02-14 (10–12) Sara
    16-2044
    Some older recorded lectures are available. These are a complement to the classroom lecture. There is no exercise for this session.
    Cross-lingual dependency parsing

  • Monday 2024-02-19 (13–15) Sara
    Chomsky, Turing
    supervision, assignment 2+3

  • Wednesday 2024-02-21 (10–12) Sara
    16-2044
    Please watch recorded lecture about Earley's algorithm first.
    The Earley algorithm
    The Earley algorithm is no longer in the course book, so will only be presented at lectures.
    Advanced PCFG

  • Monday 2024-02-26 (13–15) Sara
    NOTE: CANCELLED!
    Chomsky, Turing
    supervision, assignment 3

  • Wednesday 2024-02-28 (9–10) Sara
    NEW
    Chomsky, Turing
    Supervision, assignment 3

  • Wednesday 2024-02-28 (10–12) Sara
    16-2044
    Please watch recorded lecture first.
    Arc-factored dependency parsing, Collins’ and Eisner’s algorithm.
    Reading: KMN 4.1–4.3 (not 4.2.2).

  • Monday 2024-03-04 (Times for each group TBD. 13-16)
    2-0025
    Literature seminar 2
    Reading: Simple and Accurate Dependency Parsing Using Bidirectional LSTM Feature Representations

  • Wednesday 2024-03-06 (10–12) Sara
    Chomsky
    Supervision, project

  • Wednesday 2024-03-13 (10–12) Sara
    Chomsky
    Supervision, project

  • Monday 2024-03-25 (9-12) Sara
    NOTE THE DATE: MOVED TO MARCH 25!
    Turing (main room), Chomsky, 9-2029
    Final seminar - Project discussions