Review Questions on Natural Language Processing

This is a voluntary quiz to help you decide whether you have understood some of the major concepts from this topic. It carries no marks.

What are morphology, syntax, semantics, reference, and pragmatics?
Look up cat in a good English dictionary. How many meanings can you find for this word (i) as a noun; (ii) as a verb?
Noun and verb are parts of speech. Name as many others as you can, and give examples of them.
Noun phrase is a phrasal category. Name 5 other phrasal categories, and give examples of them.
Name the four types of grammar rules in the Chomsky hierarchy, and give an example of each type.
What type of sentence is defined by the following grammar rule?
S → AUX NP VP ?
Write the body of a Prolog rule for s/3 whose head is s(P1, P5, s(aux(Aux), NP, VP)) to parse a sentence with this structure and return the syntactic analysis as the third argument of the s/3. What extra rules and facts would need to be added to the rules given in lectures, in order to make this new s/3 rule work?
What is an active arc in a chart parser?
What is a constituent in a chart parser?
Make up an active arc and a constituent that would allow you to "advance the "•" in the active arc. What is the result of this process?

Solutions: don't read until you've tried the questions yourself!