Natural Language Information Retrieval

The last decade has been one of dramatic progress in the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP). This hitherto largely academic discipline has found itself at the center of an information revolution ushered in by the Internet age, as demand for human-computer communication and informa­tion access has exploded. Emerging applications in computer-assisted infor­ mation production and dissemination, automated understanding of news, understanding of spoken language, and processing of foreign languages have given impetus to research that resulted in a new generation of robust tools, systems, and commercial products. Well-positioned government research funding, particularly in the U. S. , has helped to advance the state-of-the­ art at an unprecedented pace, in no small measure thanks to the rigorous 1 evaluations.