Definition:
NLP is the ability of a computer program to understand the human language. Simply refers to the way humans communicate with each other. Namely, speech and text. It is a component of Artificial intelligence.
Examples:
- Email Filters
- Smart assistants
- Search results
- Predictive text
- Language translation
- Digital phone calls
- Data analysis
- Text analytics
Why NLP is important?
1. Handling large volumes of text data
2. Structuring highly unstructured data source
Techniques and methods of natural language processing:
There are mainly two techniques Syntax and Semantic analysis are used.
Syntax- arrangement of words in a sentence to make grammatical sense. Used to access the meaning from a language.
Techniques include:
- Parsing
- Word segmentation
- Sentence breaking
- Stemming
Semantics– Meaning behind words. NLP applies algorithms to understand the meaning of the sentences.
Techniques include:
- Word sense disambiguation
- Named entity recognition
- Natural language generation
Tools and libraries:
- NLTK-Natural Language Toolkit
- Stanford core NLP
- Apache OpenNLP
- SpaCy
- AllenNLP
- GenSim
- TextBlob Library
- Intel NLP Architect
Challenges of natural language processing:
- Precision
- Tone of voice and inflection
- Evolving use of language
Evolution of natural language processing.Its evolution included the following major milestones:
- 1950s- In this decade NLP has its roots.
- 1950s-1990s.NLP was largely rules-based.
- 1990s-Top-down, language-first approach to NLP was replaced with a more statistical approach.
- 2000s-2020s. NLP, dramatic growth in popularity.combination of classical linguistics and statistical methods are involved in NLP.
– Content by Umadevi Neelam