Seminar: Natural Language Processing

Natural language processing (NLP) deals with the computational analysis and snythesis of natural language text. In this seminar, we look at a subarea of NLP called computational sociolinguistics (CSL). CSL investigates research questions from the social sciences with empirical NLP technologies. Input text includes online news articles, social media posts, forum discussions, and similar. The focus is not only on the employed NLP technologies, but also on the insights into social phenomena and dynamics, raising a particular need for output interpretation and visualization. The aim of this seminar is to learn about basic ideas and recent research in CSL as well as to discuss the benefits and limitations of empirical text analysis on societal developments. 

Based on a few introductory and example talks, each participant will choose a sophisticated topic from recent NLP research. For this topic, a provided scientific paper has to be prepared and presented in a talk, adding additional background knowledge where needed and possibly further literature. The talks are given in the middle part of the lecture time. The topic also has to be summarized and discussed in a 4-page paper-like article to be submitted a few weeks later. Moreover, learning to review and to give feedback is also part of the seminar.

• Basics of statistics
• Bachelor's course: Introduction to Natural Language Processing (not obligatory)

• Daniel Jurafsky and James H. Martin. 2009. Speech and Language Processing: An Introduction to Natural Language Processing, Speech Recognition, and Computational Linguistics. Prentice-Hall, 2nd edition. Free draft of third edition: Speech and Language Processing

• General Information [slides]
• Part I – Introduction to NLP and Computational Sociolinguistics [slides]
• Part II – Topic Assignment [slides​​​​​​​]
• Part III – Introduction to Science [slides​​​​​​​​​​​​​​]
• Part IV – Basics of Literature Research
• Part V – Basics of  Oral Presentation
• Part VI – Example talk
• Part VII – Basics of Feedback
• Part VIII – Basics of Written Presentation
• Part IX – Basics of Reviewing
• Part X – Conclusion