According to Wikipedia Natural Language Processing a.k.a NLP is a “field of computer science, artificial intelligence that is concerned with interaction between computers and human languages.” NPL essentially deals with the understanding and analyzing the human language that we usually use and then transforms it into a language that only the computer is familiar. The study of Natural language processing intersects with the study of Computational Linguistics, this provides the approach that the computer/machine needs to process the human language into computer language. Many computer services use some essentials of Natural language processing. The first NLP was designed in 1950s for the intersection between artificial intelligence and linguistics. Some services that use Natural language processing include Siri, Cortana, etc. Some successful NLP systems developed included ‘SHRDLU’, ELIZA, etc.
The Natural language processing are designed to perform specific tasks. Some major tasks of NLP are automatic summarization, discourse analysis, machine translation, conference resolution, speech recognition, etc.
Automatic summarization helps the computer provide us with a summary for a specific text, article, journals, etc. Discourse analysis helps the computer to understand how the flow of sentence is supposed to maintain and go together. Machine translation or MT helps the computer to translate text or speech from one language to another. This is usually hard thing to achieve as the computer might have to know a great deal of grammar and language. These thing make it hard for a computer understand and translate. Speech recognition is used to determine the textual representation of a sentence spoken out. Some famous applications like Siri and Cortana are great examples of speech recognition.
Natural language processing is also focused on machine learning algorithms. Automated learning processes are used to create a map with the large amount of input that it may receive. There are many advantages of using machine learning algorithms. Some include- these makes it easier for the computer to understand their mistakes and learn from them, etc. There are difficulties in developing human language translation softwares as languages change constantly. Natural language processing has close ties with Artificial intelligence. Some problems in NLP are solved by AI and vice-versa.
In conclusion, Natural language processing is a field of computer science and AI that focuses mainly on the interaction among computers and humans. The very first NLP was designed in 1950. Some real life application of Natural language processing include Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana.
Questions on ‘Natural Language Processing’:
1. How does Siri or Cortana actually work?
2. What are the limitations of verification and programming languages?What research is done on this field?
3. Is there any hope for strong A.I.?
Links related to Natural Language Processing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_language_processing
https://www.coursera.org/course/nlp
http://searchcontentmanagement.techtarget.com/definition/natural-language-processing-NLP