Natural Language Understanding (2nd Edition) (Paperback)

by Allen (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
From a leading authority in artificial intelligence, this book delivers a synthesis of the major modern techniques and the most current research in natural language processing. The approach is unique in its coverage of semantic interpretation and discourse alongside the foundational material in syntactic processing.

From the Back Cover

In addition, this title offers coverage of two entirely new subject areas. First, the text features a new chapter on statistically-based methods using large corpora. Second, it includes an appendix on speech recognition and spoken language understanding. Also, the information on semantics that was covered in the first edition has been largely expanded in this edition to include an emphasis on compositional interpretation.

0805303340B04062001

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Product Details

• Paperback: 654 pages
• Publisher: Addison Wesley; 2 edition (August 13, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805303340
• ISBN-13: 978-0805303346
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #770,940 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A classic, November 11, 2000

By A Customer

Allen's book is a standard introduction to NLP in industry and academia. His exposition permits straightforward implementation and provides a lucid motivation for the algorithms he describes. "Natural Language Understanding" was the first NLP text I read (for a summer job), and I've always referred to it first for its balance of formal and practical considerations.

However, some developments in the past few years outpace his treatment. In particular, the stochastic viewpoint has become more common in natural-language processing, and Allen does not consider related innovations in great depth. Passing mention of the interaction between NLP and the speech processing and information retrievals would also benefit a revised version.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Now THERE'S a good book!, February 23, 1999

By A Customer

James Allen introduces the concepts required to build a NL system without losing you in the psycholinguistics, psychology and philosophy of language. The great part is that he gives you enough of a background in each of these fields before going into a topic in depth. Plenty of examples help define words like "morpheme" so you don't get lost in the psychobabble jargon of the required disciplines. (Wouldn't that be an ironic thing to have happen in a NLP book?!) :)

I'd love to tell you more, but I only stopped by to catch the author's name and look for whitepapers on his (hopefully existant) website.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great text, and useful reference, June 23, 1998

By A Customer

This books serves as a very useful introduction to computational linguistics. It is clearly laid out, and will serve the reader for many years as a continuing reference.

The TRAINS project at Rochester (the author's institution) was based on many of the concepts outlined in this book... proof that they work and can be made to handle real-world situations.

I continue to use it, now in its second edition as a reference for myself, and to train those who need to work with our project.

I cannot recommend a book more highly. If you want to learn computational linguistics, or need to push the state of the art, this is the book you need.