Memory-Based Learning (MBL), one of the most influential machine learning paradigms, has been applied with great success to a variety of NLP tasks. This monograph describes the application of MBL to robust parsing. Robust parsing using MBL can provide added functionality for key NLP applications, such as Information Retrieval, Information Extraction, and Question Answering, by facilitating more complex syntactic analysis than is currently available. The text presupposes no prior knowledge of MBL. It provides a comprehensive introduction to the framework and goes on to describe and compare applications of MBL to parsing. Since parsing is not easily characterizable as a classification task, adaptations of standard MBL are necessary. These adaptations can either take the form of a cascade of local classifiers or of a holistic approach for selecting a complete tree.The text provides excellent course material on MBL. It is equally relevant for any researcher concerned with symbolic machine learning, Information Retrieval, Information Extraction, and Question Answering.

Memory-based language processing - a machine learning and problem solving method for language technology - is based on the idea that the direct reuse of examples using analogical reasoning is more suited for solving language processing problems than the application of rules extracted from those examples. This book discusses the theory and practice of memory-based language processing, showing its comparative strengths over alternative methods of language modelling. Language is complex, with few generalizations, many sub-regularities and exceptions, and the advantage of memory-based language processing is that it does not abstract away from this valuable low-frequency information. By applying the model to a range of benchmark problems, the authors show that for linguistic areas ranging from phonology to semantics, it produces excellent results. They also describe TiMBL, a software package for memory-based language processing. The first comprehensive overview of the approach, this book will be invaluable for computational linguists, psycholinguists and language engineers.

This book describes the framework of inductive dependency parsing, a methodology for robust and efficient syntactic analysis of unrestricted natural language text. Coverage includes a theoretical analysis of central models and algorithms, and an empirical evaluation of memory-based dependency parsing using data from Swedish and English. A one-stop reference to dependency-based parsing of natural language, it will interest researchers and system developers in language technology, and is suitable for graduate or advanced undergraduate courses.

Dependency-based methods for syntactic parsing have become increasingly popular in natural language processing in recent years. This book gives a thorough introduction to the methods that are most widely used today. After an introduction to dependency grammar and dependency parsing, followed by a formal characterization of the dependency parsing problem, the book surveys the three major classes of parsing models that are in current use: transition-based, graph-based, and grammar-based models. It continues with a chapter on evaluation and one on the comparison of different methods, and it closes with a few words on current trends and future prospects of dependency parsing. The book presupposes a knowledge of basic concepts in linguistics and computer science, as well as some knowledge of parsing methods for constituency-based representations. Table of Contents: Introduction / Dependency Parsing / Transition-Based Parsing / Graph-Based Parsing / Grammar-Based Parsing / Evaluation / Comparison / Final Thoughts

Speech--to--Speech Translation: a Massively Parallel Memory-Based Approach describes one of the world's first successful speech--to--speech machine translation systems. This system accepts speaker-independent continuous speech, and produces translations as audio output. Subsequent versions of this machine translation system have been implemented on several massively parallel computers, and these systems have attained translation performance in the milliseconds range. The success of this project triggered several massively parallel projects, as well as other massively parallel artificial intelligence projects throughout the world. Dr. Hiroaki Kitano received the distinguished `Computers and Thought Award' from the International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence in 1993 for his work in this area, and that work is reported in this book.

Bilingual Sentence Processing

This text provides one of the broadest presentations of parallel processing available, including the structure of parallelprocessors and parallel algorithms. The emphasis is on mapping algorithms to highly parallel computers, with extensive coverage of array and multiprocessor architectures. Early chapters provide insightful coverage on the analysis of parallel algorithms and program transformations, effectively integrating a variety of material previously scattered throughout the literature. Theory and practice are well balanced across diverse topics in this concise presentation. For exceptional clarity and comprehension, the author presents complex material in geometric graphs as well as algebraic notation. Each chapter includes well-chosen examples, tables summarizing related key concepts and definitions, and a broad range of worked exercises. - Overview of common hardware and theoretical models, including algorithm characteristics and impediments to fast performance - Analysis of data dependencies and inherent parallelism through program examples, building from simple to complex - Graphic and explanatory coverage of program transformations - Easy-to-follow presentation of parallel processor structures and interconnection networks, including parallelizing and restructuring compilers - Parallel synchronization methods and types of parallel operating systems - Detailed descriptions of hypercube systems - Specialized chapters on dataflow and on AI architectures

Introducing issues in dynamic memory and case-based reasoning, this comprehensive volume presents extended descriptions of four major programming efforts conducted at Yale during the past several years. Each descriptive chapter is followed by a companion chapter containing the micro program version of the information. The authors emphasize that the only true way to learn and understand any AI program is to program it yourself. To this end, the book develops a deeper and richer understanding of the content through LISP programming instructions that allow the running, modification, and extension of the micro programs developed by the authors.

This volume brings together revised versions of a selection of papers presented at the 2003 International Conference on “Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing”. A wide range of topics is covered in the volume: semantics, dialogue, summarization, anaphora resolution, shallow parsing, morphology, part-of-speech tagging, named entity, question answering, word sense disambiguation, information extraction. Various 'state-of-the-art' techniques are explored: finite state processing, machine learning (support vector machines, maximum entropy, decision trees, memory-based learning, inductive logic programming, transformation-based learning, perceptions), latent semantic analysis, constraint programming. The papers address different languages (Arabic, English, German, Slavic languages) and use different linguistic frameworks (HPSG, LFG, constraint-based DCG). This book will be of interest to those who work in computational linguistics, corpus linguistics, human language technology, translation studies, cognitive science, psycholinguistics, artificial intelligence, and informatics.