The Core Language Engine (ACL-MIT Series in Natural Language Processing) [Hardcover]

Hiyan Alshawi (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 15, 1992 | ISBN-10: 0262011263 | ISBN-13: 978-0262011266 | Edition: 1St Edition

The Core Language Engine presents the theoretical and engineering advances embodied in one of the most comprehensive natural language processing systems designed to date. Recent research results from different areas of computational linguistics are integrated into a single elegant design with potential for application to tasks ranging from machine translation to information system interfaces.

Bridging the gap between theoretical and implementation oriented literature, The Core Language Engine describes novel analyses and techniques developed by the contributors at SRI International's Cambridge Computer Science Research Centre. It spans topics that include a wide-coverage unification grammar for English syntax and semantics, context-dependent and contextually disambiguated logical form representations, interactive translation, efficient algorithms for parsing and generation, and mechanisms for quantifier scoping, reference resolution, and lexical acquisition.

Hiyan Alshawi is Senior Computer Scientist at SRI International, Cambridge, England.

Contents: Introduction to the CLE. Logical Forms. Categories and Rules. Unification Based Syntactic Analysis. Semantic Rules for English. Lexical Analysis. Syntactic and Semantic Processing. Quantifier Scoping. Sortal Restrictions. Resolving Quasi Logical Forms. Lexical Acquisition. The CLE in Application Development. Ellipsis, Comparatives, and Generation. Swedish-English QLF Translation.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Hiyan Alshawi is Senior Computer Scientist at SRI International, Cambridge, England.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 338 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press; 1St Edition edition (May 15, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262011263
• ISBN-13: 978-0262011266
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,345,545 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Yes, this book is still relevant to aspiring NLP researchers, March 24, 2006

By 

Randall Helzerman (campbell, ca) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Core Language Engine (ACL-MIT Series in Natural Language Processing) (Hardcover)

Yes, a lot has happened since this book was written--statistical grammars, grammar induction, constraint-based grammars, not to mention that whole web thing. No matter. This book is still a valuable stepping stone on the path to NLP nirvana, and everyone who aspires to do research in NLP should come to grips with it.

Why? Because it presents what is really the example par excellance of a unification-based grammar, the core language engine. This is really the first attempt which had any sucess at all to "scale up" nlp techniques to create a system which isn't just another toy. As such, it is one of a very very few descriptions of what it is like to build a BIG program in a logic programming language.

Is this a book which points the way to future reasarch? Well, the authors have pretty much "exhausted the search space" of unification grammars here. Both their potential and their painful limitations have been plummed, and are on display here.

But even though the time of unification grammars has passed, the lessons learned in the construction of the Core Language Engine represent, IMHO, a signature achivement, and real ground gained towards the goal.

Moreover, the spirit of this research lives on. For a bang-up-to-date discussion of where this stream of research has lead, check out Blackburn & Bos's book "Representation and Inference in Natural Language".