Natural Language Books

We have used many of the WH&O books in our shop and all have been invaluable. For the new Natural programmer to the seasoned expert...these books provide good examples and "how-to" for everyone. Whenever we mis-place one we quickly reorder...no-one in our department will give theirs up!!

This book, while a bit dated, is still the best discussion of a wide variety of (nonstatistical) parsing methods in print. The best part of this book is the table on p. 191, where the author compares the runtimes of the various parsing algorithms, and shows that the one with the scariest "big O" complexity is actually the fastest in practice. This is a very important lesson to impart to budding computer scientists: use "big O" analysis wisely, not as the voice of God, as to which algorithm is the best practical algorithm.

I've given this book 4 stars instead of 5 stars because it is a little out of date: look elsewhere for the best discussions of quantifier scope handling and discourse. Also, it doesn't contain any discussions on the what is today the more fashionable statistical-based approaches, but the jury is still out, IMHO, on whether this is a drawback or not.

Allan reviews some of the basic concepts of semantics, ranging from the hazy line between pragmatics and semantics to cognitive semantics. Through out this book, he offers sample problems and questions that further understanding of sometimes difficult subject matter. While not dwelling too long on particular operators, such as the lambda operator, Allan gives thorough and helpful definitions of logical forms and their use in semantics. Most interesting to students or linguistic hobbyists are his explanations of cognitive semantics (e.g., his discussion of Whorf's theories and basic color terms) and connotation versus denotation. Near the end of the book, the material is markedly more difficult and abstract, but overall it is an approachable and useful text. Anyone looking for a good introduction to semantics that doesn't talk down to nor lose its readers would be greatly rewarded by owning a copy of this book.

Cowcher has written a thoughtful brightly colored book about the rain forest for younger elementary aged students. It introduces the reader to the rainforest and the creatures that are living there peacefully. Sloths, aneaters, and tapis roam it's cool floor. Toucans and macaws nest in its canopy. And, high above its exotic foliage, butterflies flutter. As the Jaguar prowls his lush kingdom, a cry of alarm is sounded throughout the rain forest. Something even more powerful than a Jaguar is threatening this world, and the creatures know a change is coming. This is a great book for use as a tool to involve young readers in the issue of conservation of the rainforests, it is a powerful way to show the effects of deforestation to young children through the eyes of the creatures and plantlife who inhabit this ecosystem. (fiction grades K-4).

This article is freely available on the Real Time Delphi homepage (Google it!). The Real Time Delphi site has other relevant resources, including software to make this method work.

This book provides an interesting approach to the problem of mixed-initiative dialog systems. The example is always present and helps to understand. It describes a prolog-based task oriented dialog system in which the missing axiom paradigm is used to reach the goal of each dialog system : make the user happy. Really interesting and helpful ...

Drawing heavily on the academic literature in cognitive science, this book discusses 23 methodologies for working with what the author calls "structural knowledge." The author views structural knowledge as the intermediary between declarative knowledge (know that) and procedural knowledge (know how). Methods discussed in the book include: concept maps, frames, semantic features analysis, pattern notes, graphic organizers, and many other approaches

Karen Gallas does extensive research into the method of letting children talk to learn as a learning technique. This book can be used as a handbook on how to integrate this type of teaching method into your own classroom. This is an excellent resource for any teacher wanting to really let their students interact with the content that you are teaching.

I was introduced to James Allan when i start doing my little investigation for my research. I've just finished the first 4 chapters. Absolutely a good book for those who wants to know about TDT, event-based information organization and the techniques involved to detect an event from the news streams. The book will be really beneficial though for folks who's in IR too :) It's a compilation of technical papers and maybe the TDT webpage might help in order to get the rough idea on what is TDT. Indeed the technical part will be the algorithm, approach and technique.
Can't wait to read somemore.

Klevans and Rodman did an excellent job at presenting the theory and application of voice recognition. The book goes into just the right amount of detail that a subject of this nature requires. Also, various models and techniques for dealing with speech recognition were explored, with the pros and cons of each carefully stated. It was certainly a pleasure to have read this book, and the new ideas/techniques that were presented, have influenced me to further my research in speech recognition.