We started work on this handbook three years ago and, while bringing it to fruition
has involved a great deal of work, we have enjoyed the process. We are grateful
to our colleagues who have contributed chapters to the volume. Its quality is due
to their labor and commitment. We appreciate the considerable time and effort
that they have invested in making this venture a success. It has been a pleasure
working with them.
We owe a debt of gratitude to our editors at Wiley-Blackwell, Danielle
Descoteaux and Julia Kirk, for their unstinting support and encouragement
throughout this project. We wish that all scientific-publishing projects were
blessed with publishers of their professionalism and good nature.
Finally, we must thank our families for enduring the long period of time that we
have been engaged in working on this volume. Their patience and good will has
been a necessary ingredient for its completion.
The best part of compiling this handbook has been the opportunity that it has
given each of us to observe in detail and in perspective the wonderful burst of
creativity that has taken hold of our field in recent years.
This comprehensive reference work provides an overview of the concepts, methodologies, and applications in computational linguistics and natural language processing (NLP).
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Features contributions by the top researchers in the field, reflecting the work that is driving the discipline forward
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Includes an introduction to the major theoretical issues in these fields, as well as the central engineering applications that the work has produced
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Presents the major developments in an accessible way, explaining the close connection between scientific understanding of the computational properties of natural language and the creation of effective language technologies
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Serves as an invaluable state-of-the-art reference source for computational linguists and software engineers developing NLP applications in industrial research and development labs of software companies