Silberztein Max. Formalizing Natural Languages: The NooJ Approach

ISTE Ltd., John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 2016. — 347 p. — ISBN: 1848219024.This book is at the very heart of linguistics. It provides the theoretical and methodological framework needed to create a successful linguistic project.Potential applications of descriptive linguistics include spell-checkers, intelligent search engines, information extractors and annotators, automatic summary producers, automatic translators, and more. These applications have considerable economic potential, and it is therefore important for linguists to make use of these technologies and to be able to contribute to them.The author provides linguists with tools to help them formalize natural languages and aid in the building of software able to automatically process texts written in natural language (Natural Language Processing, or NLP).Computers are a vital tool for this, as characterizing a phenomenon using mathematical rules leads to its formalization. NooJ - a linguistic development environment software developed by the author - is described and practically applied to examples of NLP.Contents:
Acknowledgments
1. Introduction: the Project
Characterizing a set of infinite sizes.
Computers and linguistics.
Levels of formalization.
Not applicable.
NLP applications.
Linguistic formalisms: NooJ.
Conclusion and structure of this book.
Exercises.
Internet links.
I. Linguistic Units
2. Formalizing the Alphabet
Bits and bytes.
Digitizing information.
Representing natural numbers.
Encoding characters.
Alphabetical order.
Classification of characters.
Conclusion.
Exercises.
Internet links.
3. Defining Vocabulary
Multiple vocabularies and the evolution of vocabulary.
Derivation.
Atomic linguistic units (ALUs).
Multiword units versus analyzable sequences of simple words.
Conclusion.
Exercises.
Internet links.
4. Electronic Dictionaries
Could editorial dictionaries be reused?
LADL electronic dictionaries.
Dubois and Dubois-Charlier electronic dictionaries.
Specifications for the construction of an electronic dictionary.
Conclusion.
Exercises.
Internet links.
II. Languages, Grammars and Machines
5. Languages, Grammars, and Machines
Definitions.
Generative grammars.
Chomsky-Schützenberger hierarchy.
The NooJ approach.
Conclusion.
Exercises.
Internet links.
6. Regular Grammars
Regular expressions.
Finite-state graphs.
Non-deterministic and deterministic graphs.
Minimal deterministic graphs.
Kleene’s theorem.
Regular expressions with outputs and finite-state transducers.
Extensions of regular grammars.
Conclusion.
Exercises.
Internet links.
7. Context-Free Grammars
Recursion.
Parse trees.
Conclusion.
Exercises.
Internet links.
8. Context-Sensitive Grammars
The NooJ approach.
NooJ contextual constraints.
NooJ variables.
Conclusion.
Exercises.
Internet links.
9. Unrestricted Grammars
Linguistic adequacy.
Conclusion.
Exercise.
Internet links.
III. Automatic Linguistic Parsing
10. Text Annotation Structure
Parsing a text.
Annotations.
Text annotation structure (TAS).
Exercise.
Internet links.
11. Lexical Analysis
Tokenization.
Word forms.
Morphological analyzes.
Multiword unit recognition.
Recognizing expressions.
Conclusion.
Exercise.
12. Syntactic Analysis
Local grammars.
Structural grammars.
Conclusion.
Exercises.
Internet links.
13. Transformational Analysis
Implementing transformations.
Theoretical problems.
Transformational analysis with NooJ.
Question answering.
Semantic analysis.
Machine translation.
Conclusion.
Exercises.
Internet links.
Conclusion.
Bibliography.
Index