FS22k: Can Machines Think?
Assignments
Readings Schedule
The listing below provides the
weekly readings to be discussed each class. Dates are provisional, and
subject to change. For those in italics, you should submit a
commentary on the paper of
your choice to the appropriate web forum. Parenthesized numbers are
chapter numbers in the course text. All other readings should be
available from the Papers portion of the web
site.
|
|
philosophy |
linguistics |
computer science |
assignments |
| |
|
reading |
reading |
topic |
assigned |
due |
paper |
| 2/2/06 |
|
Descartes (1, 2) |
|
|
|
|
|
| 2/9/06 |
|
Turing (4) |
|
universal machines |
|
|
|
| 2/16/06 |
|
|
Hockett |
FSA |
|
|
|
| 2/23/06 |
|
|
Chomsky 1-3 |
proofs of nonregularity; CFG |
1 |
|
|
| 3/2/06 |
|
Dennett (16) |
|
transformations |
2 |
1 |
|
| 3/9/06 |
|
French (13) |
Chomsky 4-6 |
|
3 |
2 |
|
| 3/16/06 |
|
Searle (14) |
Gazdar & Pullum |
|
4 |
3 |
|
| 3/23/06 |
|
Turing 1936? |
|
undecidability |
5 |
4 |
|
| 3/30/06 |
spring recess |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 4/6/06 |
|
|
Shieber 1986 |
UBGF |
|
5 |
|
| 4/13/06 |
|
|
|
Colored Trails
Working Session |
6 |
|
A |
| 4/20/06 |
|
Block (15) |
|
|
|
6 |
B |
| 4/27/06 |
|
Shieber 2005 |
|
lambda calculus |
7 |
|
|
| 5/4/06 |
|
|
|
lab session |
8 |
7 |
C |
| 5/16/05 |
|
|
|
lab session |
|
8 |
D |
Problem Set and Paper Schedule
All problem sets are due at noon on the date listed below.
| Problem Sets |
Assigned |
Due |
| 1 |
finite-state automata |
2/23/06 |
3/2/06 |
| 2 |
finite-state transducers |
3/2/06 |
3/9/06 |
| 3 |
free will |
3/9/06 |
3/16/06 |
| 4 |
Colored Trails morphology |
3/16/06 |
3/23/06 |
| 5 |
context-free grammars |
3/23/06 |
4/6/06 |
| 6 |
Colored Trails grammar |
4/13/06 |
4/20/06 |
| 7 |
Colored Trails semantics |
4/27/06 |
5/4/06 |
| 8 |
Colored Trails complete |
5/4/06 |
5/16/05 |
|
|
|
|
| Final paper stages |
|
|
| A |
meetings |
|
4/13/06 |
| B |
proposal |
|
4/20/06 |
| C |
full draft |
|
5/4/06 |
| D |
final draft |
|
5/16/05 |
Commentaries
For each class's reading, students will submit a one-paragraph
commentary on the assigned reading, some insight or idea that struck
you from the reading, an extension or application of the ideas, a
question that the reading inspired (perhaps informed by some further
reading on your part), or any other commentary inspired by the
reading. The commentaries should not be summaries of the
reading. These will be submitted on-line in the appropriate rotisserie
no later than noon the day before class. The rotisserie
software provides for you to rate others' postings and to submit a
response posting as well. For more information about the rotisserie
concept, read
the rotisserie
FAQ. The commentaries and rotisserie discussions serve as a spur
for class discussions.
The intention is that these commentaries be extremely short, in
general less than 200 words. (By way of example, these three
paragraphs are themselves about 200 words total.) Finding something
interesting and insightful to say in 200 words is typically much more
difficult than doing so in three pages, but the exercise should serve
to focus your thoughts about the readings. Brevity should not,
however, be confused with informality.
Longer commentaries are also encouraged. However, even if a longer
commentary is submitted, a short one should accompany it.
Final Paper
The final assignment for the course is a concise paper on a topic of
your choosing. Typically, this will be an extension of one of the
commentaries you submitted on the readings. Other sources of topics
include:
- Research on and discussion of one of the many issues surrounding
the Turing Test.
- Implementation and discussion of a system for performing some
natural-language processing task by computer.
- Implementation and discussion of a system for emulating one of
the formal systems that we have discussed or will discuss in class:
regular expressions, finite-state automata, context-free grammars,
pushdown automata, Turing machines.
- Exploration of an issue in the rigorous characterization of some
syntactic or semantic phenomenon in English or another natural
language. The range of such issues is huge. You can look at books
such as Greenbaum and Quirk's A Student's Grammar of the English
Language for inspiration.
These do not exhaust the possibilities for sources of paper topics.
We are very open-minded when it comes to paper topics.
The final paper is completed in four stages, with a schedule of due
dates as listed above:
- A: Meetings on topics. By this date everyone should have
met with me to discuss potential paper topics. If you haven't, you
had better see me as soon as possible.
- B: Proposal due. This should be a short description of the
problem you plan to address in your paper and how you plan to address
it. Note that just because it is short and preliminary does not mean
that it can be poorly presented.
- C: Full draft due. The full draft should be essentially
the completed paper. The only difference between the full draft and
the final draft is that you will have received comments from the
instructors and had a chance to incorporate changes in response to
them.
- D: Final draft due.
The proposal and both drafts should be submitted by email to the
instructor in one of the following formats: ASCII text, PDF, MS Word,
LaTeX.