Competitive grammar writing
Jason M. Eisner, Noah A. Smith · 2008
Just as programming is the traditional introduction to computer science, writing grammars by hand is an excellent introduction to many topics in computational linguistics. We present and justify a well-tested introductory activity in which teams of mixed background compete to write probabilistic context-free grammars of English. The exercise brings together symbolic, probabilistic, algorithmic, and experimental issues in a way that is accessible to novices and enjoyable.