CSC 2520 The Computational Lexicon

Term paper/project:

The term paper/project will be on a topic of your choosing, within the subject domain of computational lexical semantics. It does not have to be on a topic we cover in class, but it would be nice to draw connections to our discussions where relevant.

If you choose to write a term paper, it should be either a critical survey or a survey plus a proposal of new work. The paper should be about 15 pages long. The number of papers on your reading list will depend on the balance in your paper between survey material and proposed work. A reading list of less than 5 papers is almost certainly too short, and more than 15 papers would be excessive for this assignment. Note that “proposed new work” must be very well thought out and planned, for it to justify much less less attention given to the critical survey aspect of the paper.

If you would like to do a project, you will still be required to do some background reading and write a paper, although the paper will be shorter and with a different balance of topics. You still need to provide some critical survey of work, but much of your paper will describe your project and results.

Milestones and due dates:

Meet with Suzanne to go over your proposed topic: week of Jan 26-30

Email me to set a meeting time. Come to the meeting with a proposed topic area (or very small set of possible topic areas), and a plan of whether you are more interested in a paper or project.

Proposal due: Feb 6 (with feedback to you by Feb 13)

This should be a one page description of your topic area, your proposed reading list, and either (1) a description of whether you plan to write a survey paper or combined survey and proposal, or (2) a plan for a project component with accompanying paper as appropriate.

Midterm checkpoint: Mar 19

At this point, you should have read the papers on your reading list. You will submit a detailed outline of your paper/project, along with a brief summary of each reading, in your own words – a short abstract of what’s important in the paper in the context of your paper/project. If you are doing a project component, please describe briefly any preliminary results you have gotten.

Final paper/project due: Apr 23