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You're reading from  Natural Language Understanding with Python

Product typeBook
Published inJun 2023
PublisherPackt
ISBN-139781804613429
Edition1st Edition
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Author (1)
Deborah A. Dahl
Deborah A. Dahl
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Deborah A. Dahl

Deborah A. Dahl is the principal at Conversational Technologies, with over 30 years of experience in natural language understanding technology. She has developed numerous natural language processing systems for research, commercial, and government applications, including a system for NASA, and speech and natural language components on Android. She has taught over 20 workshops on natural language processing, consulted on many natural language processing applications for her customers, and written over 75 technical papers. Th is is Deborah's fourth book on natural language understanding topics. Deborah has a PhD in linguistics from the University of Minnesota and postdoctoral studies in cognitive science from the University of Pennsylvania.
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Rule-based approaches

The basic idea behind rule-based approaches is that language obeys rules about how words are related to their meanings. For example, when we learn foreign languages, we typically learn specific rules about what words mean, how they’re ordered in sentences, and how prefixes and suffixes change the meanings of words. The rule-based approach to NLU operates on the premise that these kinds of rules can be provided to an NLU system so that the system can determine the meanings of sentences in the same way that a person does.

The rule-based approach was widely used in NLU from the mid-1950s through the mid-1990s until machine-learning-based approaches became popular. However, there are still NLU problems where rule-based approaches are useful, either on their own or when combined with other techniques.

We will begin by reviewing the rules and data that are relevant to various aspects of language.

Words and lexicons

Nearly everyone is familiar with...

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Natural Language Understanding with Python
Published in: Jun 2023Publisher: PacktISBN-13: 9781804613429

Author (1)

author image
Deborah A. Dahl

Deborah A. Dahl is the principal at Conversational Technologies, with over 30 years of experience in natural language understanding technology. She has developed numerous natural language processing systems for research, commercial, and government applications, including a system for NASA, and speech and natural language components on Android. She has taught over 20 workshops on natural language processing, consulted on many natural language processing applications for her customers, and written over 75 technical papers. Th is is Deborah's fourth book on natural language understanding topics. Deborah has a PhD in linguistics from the University of Minnesota and postdoctoral studies in cognitive science from the University of Pennsylvania.
Read more about Deborah A. Dahl