Machine Learning of Natural Language

We are still a long way from designing computers that can understand human languages. The authors view natural language as fundamental to human cognitive processes and perhaps the key to making machines that can understand us. In this electronic age, language is increasingly the province of workers in the fields of cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence who record, transmit, simulate and analyse its form and representation. The authors explore current thinking in the search for machine understanding of human languages, focusing on how computing machinery can acquire the cognitive structures which occur in natural language. The book begins with a summary of basic views of methodology, bringing together linguistic, scientific, neurological and related cognitive approaches. It concludes with a description of experimental learning mechanisms, some of which are simplifications of the way a natural language acquisition system might be built, and some example programs in PROLOG.