Abstract

For twenty years, unification and rewriting have played a major role in the modeling of linguistic phenomena. More recently, notions of types (as in typed feature systems) and constraints have emerged and are now extensively used in theoretical computational linguistics and the development of applications. Recent developments in the area of logic programming, such as new compilations techniques, constraints, object-oriented programming and higher-order programming, coincide perfectly with the needs of computational linguistics. Moreover, logic programming offers a well-defined theoretical framework whose computational properties are well identified and are efficient to operate. Advanced Logic Programming for Language Processing covers the main advanced features of logic programming. Each feature is introduced step by step, and its use for natural language processing is studied in detail. A large number of programs illustrate the advantages and current limitations of each feature. This book is essential reading for advanced undergraduates and graduates in computational linguistics and cognitive science. It will also interest engineers involved in the development of natural language techniques.