Title: Natural Language Processing
1Natural Language Processing
Frank Bergman Mike Gallagher Jason Firestone
Barcelona, October 19th, 2001
2Stacked Layers of Language
Person A
Person B
Thoughts
Thoughts
Pragmatics
Pragmatics
Semantics
Semantics
Syntax
Syntax
Speech
Speech
3Infrastructure
4Verbmobil Speech2Speech Translation
5Verbmobil Video http//verbmobil.dfki.de/overview
-us.html
6Speech Audio signals
I am hungry
Person A
Person B
Thoughts
Thoughts
Pragmatics
Pragmatics
Semantics
Semantics
I am hungry
Syntax
Syntax
Speech
Speech
Audio Signals
7Syntax Sentence structure
Person A
Person B
Thoughts
Thoughts
Pragmatics
Pragmatics
Semantics
Semantics
Syntax
Syntax
Speech
Speech
Grammar Formalisms DCG, HPSG,
8Semantics Meaning and Logics
Person A
Person B
Thoughts
Thoughts
Pragmatics
Pragmatics
Semantics
Semantics
?x.self(x) ? hungry(x)
Syntax
Syntax
Speech
Speech
Logic Formalisms FOL, Lambda Calculus,
9Pragmatics The world around us
Person A
Person B
Thoughts
Thoughts
Pragmatics
Pragmatics
Semantics
Semantics
Syntax
Syntax
Speech
Speech
Frames, Semantic Networks, Description Logics,
10Thoughts What we feel
I am hungry
Person A
Person B
Thoughts
Thoughts
Pragmatics
Pragmatics
Semantics
Semantics
Syntax
Syntax
Speech
Speech
11Markets
SpeechInput
AutomaticTranslation
DialogSystems
- Players
- Philips
- IBM
- Lernout Hauspie
- ATT
- Market Conditions
- High entrance barriers
- Low margin products
12Commercial Impact
- The generated value is very low
- The technology doesnt work yet
13The Future
- Current
- Low margin add-on to operating systems
- Automatic translations have bad quality
- Next 5 Years
- Low margin add-on for mobile devices
- Translation quality will slightly enhance
- Dialog systems becoming more common
- Next 20 Years
- Speech processing will become ubiquous in public
life, but no real intelligence - Translation quality will slightly enhance
14Links
- Verbmobil http//verbmobil.dfki.de/
- ATT Demo http//www.naturalvoices.att.com/demos/
- Philips Speech Processing http//www.philipsspeec
hprocessing.com/ - Babelfish http//www.babelfish.com/
- Lernout Hauspie http//www.lhsl.com/
- Ray Kurzweil AI Net http//www.kurzweilai.net/
- ALICE http//www.alicebot.org