MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Spring 2004 Catalogue Supplement

6.892 Computational Models of Discourse (H)

L MW10, Room 2-147
Professor Regina Barzilay, 8-5706, Room NE43-603
Prereq.: 6.034
3-0-9

This subject qualifies as an Artificial Intelligence and Applications Concentration subject.

This course is a graduate level introduction to automatic discourse processing. The emphasis in this course will be on methods and models that have applicability to natural language and speech processing.

The class will cover the following topics: discourse structure, models of coherence and cohesion, plan recognition algorithms, and text segmentation. We will study symbolic as well as machine learning methods for discourse analysis.

We will also discuss the use of these methods in a variety of applications ranging from dialogue systems to automatic essay writing.