Computational Complexity and Natural Language

Barton, G. Edward, Jr.; Berwick, Robert C.; Ristad, Eric Sven

ISBN 10: 0262022664 / ISBN 13: 9780262022668

Published by Bradford Books, 1987

About this Item

Gently read. May have name of previous ownership, or ex-library edition. Binding tight; spine straight and smooth, with no creasing; covers clean and crisp. Minimal signs of handling or shelving. 100% GUARANTEE! Shipped with delivery confirmation, if you're not satisfied with purchase please return item! Ships USPS Media Mail.

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: Computational Complexity and Natural Language
• Publisher: Bradford Books
• Publication Date: 1987
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0262022664
• ISBN 13: 9780262022668
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: very_good

About this title

Synopsis

Computational Complexity and Natural Language heralds an entirely new way of looking at grammatical systems. It applies the recently developed computer science tool of complexity theory to the study of natural language. A unified and coherent account emerges of how complexity theory can probe the information-processing structure of grammars, discovering why a grammar is easy or difficult to process and suggesting where to look for additional grammatical constraints.

For the linguist or cognitive scientist, the book presents a nontechnical introduction to complexity theory and discusses its strengths, its weaknesses, and how it can be used to study grammars. For the computer scientist, it offers a more sophisticated and efficient computational analysis of linguistic theories. Given the variety of new techniques rising from complexity theory, the authors foresee a developing cooperation among linguists, cognitive scientists, and computer scientists toward understanding the nature of human language.

The book also describes a set of case studies that use complexity theory to analyze grammatical problems. And it examines several grammatical systems currently of interest to computational linguists - including spelling-change/dictionary lookup and morphological analysis, agreement processes in natural language, and lexical-functional grammar - demonstrating how complexity analysis can illuminate and improve each one.

All of the authors are at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Robert C. Berwick is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. A Bradford Book.

About the Author

Staff at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.