LINGUIST List 12.3005

Mon Dec 3 2001

FYI: Clinical Linguistics, Parsing Program Demo

Editor for this issue: Marie Klopfenstein <marielinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Roelien Bastiaanse, european master's in clinical linguistics
2. Clayton Darwin, NLP for Intro to Linguistics

The European Master's in Clinical Linguistics (EMCL) is a university 
programme at advanced level (Master's type) in Clinical Linguistics, 
providing an integrated training in both neurolinguistic theory and 
clinical methods. Students with a background in linguistics or 
psychology will become acquainted with the clinical situation, so 
that they will be able to develop better assessment and treatment 
materials. Speech and Language pathologists who follow this 
programme will acquire more knowledge about theoretical 
background of the langauge disorders and the relation between 
language and the brain. It is envisaged that a certain cross-
fertilisation will take place as well, as a result of which speech and 
language pathologists will contribute to the development of material 
or tests, while students with a more theoretical background get 
involved in clinical activities.

The programme comprises three terms and reflects the European 
character of the EMCL. In the first term, the student will study at 
his/her 'home university', i.e. the university where s/he is registered 
for the EMCL. This term is similar at the participating institutions 
and will consist of a number of core courses. During the second or 
third term, the student should go to one of the other universities 
sponsored by the European Union under Socrates, to do 
specialised courses; the remaining term will be used for research 
classes and is done at the home university again. Finally, the 
student will write an MA-thesis and attend a summerschool or a 
conference to finish the programme.
The Board-of-Studies consists of members of the participating 
institution, i.e. the universities of Groningen (NL), Joensuu (FI), 
Newcastle (UK), Oslo (N), Potsdam (D), Reading (UK) and Milan 
(IT). In 2002-2003 the programme wille be ran at the universities of 
Groningen (NL0 and Potsdam (D). All courses will be taught in 
English. The deadline for sending in an application form is 1st of 
March 2002.

For more information see our homepage:
http://www.let.rug.nl/emcl/
e-mail: emcllet.rug.nl
Information packages (including an application form) will be available 
from December 2001.
Prof. Dr. Roelien Bastiaanse
University of Groningen, Dept. Linguistics
PO Box 716, 9700 AS Groningen
The Netherlands
phone: +31 50 363 5558/5858 (secr)
fax: +31 50 363 6855

Hi all,

I've been working on a parser for introducing students (and instructors) 
to NLP. It is now running on the web and ready to be used at:
http://ais.ai.uga.edu/cdarwin/index.html 
I would appreciate folks trying it out and letting me know what you think 
(good or bad). Below is a little introduction to give you an idea of what it can do.

Thanks,
Clayton Darwin 
Linguistics Program
University of Georgia


Introduction: This is a web demonstration version of the SPARSE II 
parsing program. SPARSE II (Student PARSing Environment) is a parsing 
program intended to be used as a pedagogical tool to help syntax 
students grasp the complexity of natural-language grammars and to begin 
developing their own models. It provides a true introduction to Natural 
Language Processing without requiring familiarity with Lisp or Prolog. 
The key feature of SPARSE II is that grammar rules are not integrated 
into the program: they are supplied by the user. This means that there 
is no underlying theoretical model in the program; it simply parses what 
it can with the rules available. The user is free to implement the rules 
according to any framework. For the more advanced user, SPARSE II is a 
stable platform for testing experimental grammars. The parse algorithm 
used by SPARSE II returns all possible parses (the web version is 
limited to 10), handles left recursion, optional elements and null 
constituents, provides feature unification using GULP notation, and 
displays parse trees. You can download SPARSE II to use offline if you 
like (it's much faster).