LEVELS OF LANGUAGE ANALYSIS

NLP involves analyzing language at multiple levels

to understand its structure and meaning.
Key Levels:
Phonetic/Phonological Level
Morphological Level
Lexical Level
Syntactic Level
Semantic Level
Discourse Level
Pragmatic Level
 Phonetic/Phonological Level

• Focus:
Analysis of sounds and pronunciation.
• Key Concepts:
– Phonemes (smallest units of sound).
– Speech recognition, text-to-speech systems.
• Example:
Differentiating between "bat" and "pat.
 2. Morphological Level
• Focus:
Structure of words and their formation.
• Key Concepts:
– Morphemes (smallest meaningful units, e.g.,
prefixes, suffixes).
– Stemming, lemmatization.
• Example:
Breaking down "unhappiness" into "un-" +
"happy" + "-ness."
 3. Lexical Level

• Focus:
Analysis of individual words (vocabulary).
• Key Concepts:
– Tokenization (splitting text into words).
– Part-of-speech (POS) tagging.
• Example:
Identifying "run" as a verb in "I run every day."
 4. Syntactic Level
• Focus:
Sentence structure and grammar.
• Key Concepts:
– Parsing (analyzing sentence structure).
– Grammar rules, dependency trees.
• Example:
Analyzing "The cat sat on the mat" as Subject-
Verb-Prepositional Phrase.
 Semantic Level
• Focus:
Meaning of words, phrases, and sentences.
• Key Concepts:
– Word sense disambiguation.
– Semantic role labeling.
• Example:
Understanding "bank" as a financial institution
vs. a riverbank
 5. Discourse Level

• Focus:
Structure and meaning across sentences.
• Key Concepts:
– Cohesion, coherence.
– Coreference resolution.
• Example:
Resolving pronouns like "he" or "she" in a
paragraph.
 6. Pragmatic Level

• Focus:
Context and intended meaning.
• Key Concepts:
– Speech acts, implied meaning.
– Sentiment analysis, sarcasm detection.
• Example:
Interpreting "Great job!" as sincere praise or
sarcasm based on context.
 Language Representation in NLP

• What is Representation?
The process of converting human language into a
format that machines can process.
• Key Approaches:
– Symbolic Representation:
• Rules-based systems (e.g., grammar rules).
– Statistical Representation:
• Probabilistic models (e.g., n-grams).
– Neural Representation:
• Distributed representations (e.g., word embeddings).
 Symbolic Representation

• Focus:
Using formal rules and structures to represent
language.
• Examples:
– Syntax trees for sentence structure.
– Ontologies for semantic relationships.
• Pros:
– Interpretable and precise.
• Cons:
– Limited scalability and flexibility.
 Statistical Representation

• Focus:
Using probabilistic models to capture patterns in
language.
• Examples:
– N-grams (e.g., bigrams, trigrams).
– Hidden Markov Models (HMMs).
• Pros:
– Handles ambiguity and variability in language.
• Cons:
– Requires large amounts of data.
 Neural Representation

• Focus:
Using deep learning models to create distributed
representations of language.
• Examples:
– Word Embeddings (e.g., Word2Vec, GloVe).
– Contextualized Embeddings (e.g., BERT, GPT).
• Pros:
– Captures complex relationships and context.
• Cons:
– Computationally expensive and less interpretable.
 Language Understanding in NLP

• The ability of machines to derive meaning

from language representations.
• Key Tasks:
– Sentiment Analysis.
– Named Entity Recognition (NER).
– Machine Translation.
– Question Answering.
 Challenges in Language
Understanding
• Ambiguity:
– Lexical (e.g., "bank" as a riverbank or financial
institution).
– Syntactic (e.g., "I saw the man with the telescope").
• Context Dependency:
– Understanding meaning based on context.
• World Knowledge:
– Machines lack real-world experience and common
sense.
•
 ORGANIZATION OF NATURAL
UNDERSTANDING SYSTEM
• Systems designed to enable machines to
understand, interpret, and respond to human
language.
• Key Components of NLP Systems
• Core Components:
– Input Processing:
• Text or speech input.
– Preprocessing:
• Tokenization, normalization, etc.
– Representation:
• Converting text into machine-readable formats.
– Understanding:
• Deriving meaning using models and algorithms.
– Output Generation:
• Producing responses or actions.
• Input Processing
• Types of Input:
– Text (e.g., typed sentences).
– Speech (e.g., voice commands).
• Challenges:
– Handling noisy or unstructured data.
– Multilingual and multimodal inputs.
• Preprocessing
• Tasks:
– Tokenization: Splitting text into words or sentences.
– Normalization: Converting text to a standard format
(e.g., lowercase).
– Stopword Removal: Removing common words (e.g.,
"the," "is").
– Stemming/Lemmatization: Reducing words to their
base forms.
• Purpose:
To prepare raw text for analysis.
• Representation
• Methods:
– Symbolic Representation: Rules-based systems (e.g.,
syntax trees).
– Statistical Representation: Probabilistic models (e.g.,
n-grams).
– Neural Representation: Distributed representations
(e.g., word embeddings).
• Examples:
– Word2Vec, GloVe, BERT.
• Understanding
• Tasks:
– Syntax Analysis: Parsing sentence structure.
– Semantic Analysis: Deriving meaning from text.
– Pragmatic Analysis: Understanding context and
intent.
• Techniques:
– Rule-based systems.
– Machine learning models (e.g., classifiers).
– Deep learning models (e.g., transformers).
• Output Generation
• Tasks:
– Text Generation: Producing human-like
responses.
– Action Execution: Performing tasks based on
input (e.g., setting a reminder).
• Examples:
– Chatbots generating replies.
– Virtual assistants executing commands.
• Architecture of NLP Systems
• Modular Architecture:
– Input Module: Handles text or speech input.
– Processing Module: Preprocesses and represents
data.
– Understanding Module: Analyzes and derives
meaning.
– Output Module: Generates responses or actions.
• Pipeline Approach:
– Sequential flow of data through modules.
• Example: Chatbot Architecture
• Components:
– User Interface: For input and output.
– NLU (Natural Language Understanding): Interprets
user intent.
– Dialogue Manager: Manages conversation flow.
– Response Generator: Creates appropriate responses.
• Workflow:
– User input → NLU → Dialogue Manager → Response
Generator → Output.
 linguistic background an outline of
english syntax
• Linguistics Definition:
The scientific study of language and its
structure.
• Syntax Definition:
The study of sentence structure and the rules
governing word arrangement.
• Importance in NLP:
Syntax helps machines understand and
generate grammatically correct sentences.
• Key Linguistic Concepts
• Phonetics and Phonology:
Study of sounds in language.
• Morphology:
Study of word formation and structure.
• Syntax:
Study of sentence structure.
• Semantics:
Study of meaning in language.
• Pragmatics:
Study of language in context.
• What is Syntax?
• Definition:
The set of rules, principles, and processes that
govern the structure of sentences in a language.
• Key Questions in Syntax:
– How are words arranged to form sentences?
– What are the grammatical rules of a language?
• Example:
"The cat sat on the mat" vs. "Sat the cat on the
mat."
• Components of English Syntax
• Words:
The smallest units of meaning.
• Phrases:
Groups of words that function as a unit (e.g., noun
phrases, verb phrases).
• Clauses:
Groups of words containing a subject and a predicate.
• Sentences:
Complete grammatical units expressing a thought.
•
• Phrase Structure in English
• Noun Phrase (NP):
– Example: "The quick brown fox."
• Verb Phrase (VP):
– Example: "jumps over the lazy dog."
• Prepositional Phrase (PP):
– Example: "on the mat."
• Adjective Phrase (AdjP):
– Example: "very quick."
• Adverb Phrase (AdvP):
– Example: "quite slowly."
• Grammatical Roles in Syntax
• Subject:
The doer of the action (e.g., "The cat" in "The cat
sat").
• Predicate:
The action or state (e.g., "sat on the mat").
• Object:
The receiver of the action (e.g., "the mat").
• Modifiers:
Words that describe or qualify others (e.g.,
adjectives, adverbs).
• yntactic Parsing in NLP
• Definition:
The process of analyzing a sentence's structure based
on syntax rules.
• Types of Parsing:
– Dependency Parsing: Focuses on relationships between
words.
– Constituency Parsing: Focuses on hierarchical structure
(phrases and clauses).
• Example:
Parsing "The cat sat on the mat" into its syntactic tree.
• Dependency Parsing
• Focus:
Identifying grammatical relationships between
words.
• Example:
– "sat" → root verb.
– "cat" → subject of "sat."
– "mat" → object of "on."
• Applications:
– Information extraction, question answering.
• Constituency Parsing
• Focus:
Breaking sentences into hierarchical phrases.
• Example:
– Sentence → NP + VP.
– NP → "The cat."
– VP → "sat on the mat."
• Applications:
– Grammar checking, sentence generation.