Syllabus

Course description: Online syllabus at www.cs232f.mmeteer.com

This half semester graduate seminar will explore the theoretical underpinnings and current research in discourse and discourse structure. The focus will be on dialog and where possible, from the perspective of natural language generation.

Each week we will read and discuss a different aspect of computational models of human-human discourse, looking at fundamental research. Students will then explore where and how in the field these principles are being applied today. While we will focus on theory, not application, the problem of how we can incorporate these ideas in dialog systems will be an important part of the discussion. In addition, we will be working with a variety of corpora to understand how the discourse principles stand up to actual dialogs.

The course will involve reading, discussion, student presentations, and data analysis. The final paper/project will require research and analysis.

Learning goals

  • Students read and understand the fundamental literature in the field of discoures/dialog and gain the ability to articulate the important elements of the areas covered in the course.
  • Students learn to do independent research to find works that report on outgrowths of the fundamental literature.
  • Students gain skill in summarizing and presenting the findings from their research.
  • Students learn to write a “conference length” paper analyzing current research in the field.

Topics

The course will cover the following topics, among others. The assigned readings and dates will be available on the course schedle page. Papers are available on the group Zotero site.

Schedule

Topics and assignments for each class are posted on the schedule page. Please check this reguarly, as it may change throughout the year.

Grading

  • Class participation: 30%
  • Presentations 40%
  • Final paper/project: 30%

If you are a student with a documented disability on record at Brandeis University and which to have reasonable accommodations made for you in this class, please see me immediately.

Success in this 2 credit hour course is based on the expectation that students will spend a minimum of 9 hours of study time per week in preparation for class (readings, papers, discussion sections, preparation for exams, etc.).

Prerequisites

LING131 or Intro to Linguistics or permission of the instructor