{"id":1371,"date":"2026-07-16T16:01:03","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T15:01:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/?page_id=1371"},"modified":"2026-07-16T16:18:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T15:18:16","slug":"learning-conditional-random-fields-from-unaligned-data-for-natural-language-understanding","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/learning-conditional-random-fields-from-unaligned-data-for-natural-language-understanding\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning Conditional Random Fields from Unaligned Data for Natural Language Understanding"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-group is-nowrap is-layout-flex wp-container-core-group-is-layout-8f761849 wp-block-group-is-layout-flex\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image has-custom-css wp-custom-css-4ddcccf4\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/stadium.open.ac.uk\/stadia\/stadia\/speakerimages\/1964.jpg\" alt=\"Dr. Deyu Zhou\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Dr. Deyu Zhou &#8211; School of Computer Science and Engineering, Southeast University, China<br><small>This event took place on Friday 28 October 2011 at 11:30<\/small><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One of the key tasks in natural language understanding is semantic parsing which maps natural language sentences to complete formal meaning representations. Rule-based approaches are typically domain-specific and often fragile. Statistical approaches are able to accommodate the variations found in real data and hence can in principle be more robust. However, statistical approaches need fully annotated data for training the models. A learning approach to train conditional random fields from unaligned data for natural language understanding is proposed and discussed. The learning approach resembles the expectation maximization algorithm. It has two advantages, one is that only abstract annotations are needed instead of fully word-level annotations, and the other is that the proposed learning framework can be easily extended for training other discriminative models, such as support vector machines, from abstract annotations. The proposed approach has been tested on the DARPA Communicator Data. Experimental results show that it outperforms the hidden vector state (HVS) model, a modified hidden Markov model also trained on abstract annotations.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stadium.open.ac.uk\/stadia\/preview.php?s=29&amp;whichevent=1777\">Watch the webcast replay &gt;&gt;<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-group\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/past-seminars\/\">View all past events<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group is-nowrap is-layout-flex wp-container-core-group-is-layout-8f761849 wp-block-group-is-layout-flex\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full has-custom-css wp-custom-css-ac9b5317\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"213\" height=\"246\" src=\"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2026\/07\/image-2.png\" alt=\"Maven of the Month\" class=\"wp-image-537\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group is-vertical is-layout-flex wp-container-core-group-is-layout-4fc3f8e1 wp-block-group-is-layout-flex\">\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/maven-of-the-month\/\">Maven of the Month<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We are also inviting top experts in AI and Knowledge Technologies to discuss major socio-technological topics with an audience that comprises both members of the Knowledge Media Institute, as well as the wider staff at The Open University. Differently from our seminar series, these events follow a Q&amp;A format.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dr. Deyu Zhou &#8211; School of Computer Science and Engineering, Southeast University, ChinaThis event took place on Friday 28 October 2011 at 11:30 One of the key tasks in natural language understanding is semantic parsing which maps natural language sentences to complete formal meaning representations. Rule-based approaches are typically domain-specific and often fragile. Statistical approaches [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"unity_related_person":[],"unity_sdg":[],"unity_research_theme":[],"unity_strategic_priority":[],"unity_enabler":[],"unity_general_category":[],"unity_stem_unit":[],"unity_related_project":[],"unity_related_archived_project":[],"unity_related_event":[],"class_list":["post-1371","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1371"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1371\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1400,"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1371\/revisions\/1400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"unity_related_person","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/unity_related_person?post=1371"},{"taxonomy":"unity_sdg","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/unity_sdg?post=1371"},{"taxonomy":"unity_research_theme","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/unity_research_theme?post=1371"},{"taxonomy":"unity_strategic_priority","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/unity_strategic_priority?post=1371"},{"taxonomy":"unity_enabler","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/unity_enabler?post=1371"},{"taxonomy":"unity_general_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/unity_general_category?post=1371"},{"taxonomy":"unity_stem_unit","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/unity_stem_unit?post=1371"},{"taxonomy":"unity_related_project","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/unity_related_project?post=1371"},{"taxonomy":"unity_related_archived_project","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/unity_related_archived_project?post=1371"},{"taxonomy":"unity_related_event","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/unity_related_event?post=1371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}