HUL381 - 3 credits (3-0-0)

Mind, Machines and Language

II Semester 2013-14
Course coordinator: Dr Rajakrishnan Rajkumar
Class room & time: Mon, Thurs 5 to 6:20pm (M slot); Room: Block VI LT1
E-mail: raja@iitd.ac.in (best way to reach me)
Office Hours: By appointment at Block 2, Room 402 (H)
TA: Usha Udaar; Email: ushaudaar@gmail.com
Course Website: HUL381 on www.sakai.iitd.ac.in/
Course objectives
This course will benefit any student who wishes to think systematically the cognitive
structures that he or she inhabits but otherwise takes for granted. The specific objectives of
this class are:
1. Understand how humans learn and process language
2. Examine how computers learn and process language
3. Use computers to understand how humans process language
Students will achieve these objectives mainly by reading the relevant literature and in the
course of the discussions, students will also be prompted to reflect about and appreciate the
linguistic diversity of India.
Pre-requisities
1. Should have taken HUN100
2. Should NOT have taken HUL281 for credit/audit in any previous semester. Students
who have taken HUL281 previously will be disenrolled.
Evaluation policy
Attendance: 5%
Participation: 4%
Homeworks: 21%
Minor1: 20%
Minor2: 20%
Major: 30%
Marks required to pass: 40 % (auditors are expected to score 40% of all non-exam
components of the course)
Auditors will be evaluated on their performance in all the graded components of the course
except exams.
Important Note:
As per IITD's course of study document:
http://www.iitd.ac.in/sites/default/files/semsch/Courses_of_Study_!"_"#.pdf
The grading reflects a students own proficiency in the course. While relative standing of the
student is clearly indicated by his/her grades, the process of awarding grades is not based upon
fitting performance of the class to some statistical distribution. The course coordinator and
associated faculty for a course formulate appropriate procedure to award grades that are reflective
of the students performance vis--vis instructors expectation.
An A grade stands for outstanding achievement. The minimum marks for award of an A grade is
80 %. However, individual course coordinators may set a higher erformance re!uirement. The "
grade stands for marginal erformance# i.e. it is the minimum assing grade in any course. The
minimum marks for award of " grade is $0 %, however, individual course coordinators may set a
higher marks re!uirement.
Attendance & In Class Activities: There will be several graded in-class group activities
throughout the quarter. There might be test questions based on these activities. Attendance
is a graded course requirement. Every lecture is worth 2 points. Students who are late for
more than 15 mins or who leave early will not be eligible for attendance for that day. Given
that homeworks, quizzes, and the exams address the material covered in class, attendance
is essential for doing well in this class.
Academic Misconduct: No academic misconduct will be tolerated, and as required by IIT
Delhi policies, any suspicions of cheating and/or plagiarism will be reported. If there is any
doubt as to what constitutes academic misconduct, please ASK before committing the act.
Cheating/plagiarism committed in ignorance is still considered academic misconduct.
Classroom etiquette: Please do not engage in cell-phone conversations and text messaging
during class. You are not allowed to use your laptops during class as it might distract other
students. Rude behavior will result in expulsion from the class. Please be courteous to the
instructors and fellow students.
Make-up Policy:
1. A student who is absent due to illness or any other emergency, up to a maximum of two
weeks, should approach the course coordinator with adequate documentation for make-up
quizzes, assignments and laboratory work.
2. A student who has been absent from a minor test due to illness should approach the
course coordinator for a make-up test within 2 days of the test. The request should be
supported with a medical certificate from institutes medical officer. A certificate from a
registered medical practitioner will also be acceptable for a student normally residing off-
campus provided registration number of the medical practitioner appears explicitly on the
certificate. External medical certificates should also be countersigned by the UG dean.
3. In case a student cannot appear in a minor test on the same day in which he/she has
appeared in a test, a medical certificate only from the institutes medical officer will be
acceptable.
. !t a date after "inor#, there will be one combined re-minor exam for all students who miss
either "inor$ or "inor#. %tudents will be tested on all topics covered in class till "inor#.
Homeworks
An integral part of the course is a set of computer-based assignments. Students are
expected to submit assignments via Sakai before the stipulated deadline. Late assignments
will NOT be graded (no request for concession for whatever reason).
Essential Readings
An Introduction to Language, 9th Edition by Victoria Fromkin, Robert Rodman and Nina
Hyms
Fundamentals of Psycholinguistics, Eva Fernandez and Helen Smith Cairns, Wiley-Blackwell,
2012
Introduction to Psycholinguistics: Understanding Language Science, Matthew J. Traxler. John
Wiley and Sons Ltd., 2012
Foundations of Statistical Natural Language Processing. Christopher D. Manning and
Hinrich Schutze. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, 1.
Speech and Language Processing: An Introduction to Natural Language Processing,
Computational Linguistics and Speech Recognition !Prentice Ha"" Series in Articia"
Inte""igence#. Danie" $ura%s&' and $ames H. Martin. Prentice Ha"", ())).
Language and Computers, 1
st
Edition, Markus Dickinson, Chris Brew and Detmar Meurers,
Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.
I will assign more readings during the course of the semester.
Schedule of lectures and readings
This is a tentative schedule. We will follow the structure outlined below, but it's hard to
predict in advance how long we will spend on each topic. I may also alter some of the
readings as we go along, and assign additional readings.
Topics:
Topic I: Introduction
- &rain and language
- Nature of linguistic knowledge
- Thin'ing machines
Topic II: $ords
- "orphology( structure of words
- %po'en word comprehension
- "ar'ov models for assigning labels to words( Theory and implementation
- )ommunicative efficiency and *ipf+s law
- ,isual word recognition
Topic III: %an&ua&e learnin&
- -anguage ac.uisition by humans
- &asic introduction to machine learning
- /eural networ's basics
- 0erceptrons( Theory and implementation
Special Topic: Appreciate the linguistic diversity of South Asia
If there is more time, I will add more topics.