Ekaterina Kochmar - Getting Started with Natural Language Processing

Thank you for choosing Getting Started with Natural Language Processing. I am very excited that you decided to learn about natural language processing (NLP) with the help of this book, and I hope that youll enjoy getting started with NLP following this material and the examples.

Natural language processing addresses various types of tasks related to language and processing of information expressed in human language. The field and techniques have been around for quite a long time, and they are well integrated into our everyday lives; in fact, you are probably benefiting from NLP on a daily basis without realizing it. Therefore, I cant really overemphasize the importance and the impact that this technology has on our lives. The first chapter of this book will give you an overview of the wide scope of NLP applications that you might be using regularlyfrom internet search engines to spam filters to predictive keyboards (and many more!), and the rest the book will help you to implement many of these applications from scratch yourself.

In recent years, the field has been gaining more and more interest and attention. There are several reasons for this: on the one hand, thanks to the internet, we now have access to increasingly larger amounts of data. On the other hand, thanks to the recent developments in computer hardware and software, we have more powerful technology to process this data. The recent advances in machine learning and deep learning have also contributed to the increasing importance of NLP. These days, large tech companies are realizing the potential of using NLP, and businesses in legal tech, finance, insurance, health care, and many other sectors are investing in it. The reason for that is clearlanguage is the primary means of communication in all spheres of life, so being able to efficiently process the information expressed in the form of human language is always an advantage. This makes a book on NLP very timely. My goal with this book is to introduce you to a wide variety of topics related to natural language and its processing, and to show how and why these things matter in practical applicationsbe that your own small project or a company-level project that could benefit from extracting and using information from texts.

I have been working in NLP for over a decade now, and before switching to NLP, I primarily focused on linguistics and theoretical studies of language. Looking back, what motivated and excited me the most about turning to the more technical field of NLP were the incredible new opportunities opened up to me by technology and the ease of working with data and getting the information you need from texts, whether in the context of academic studies about the language itself or in the context of practical applications in any other domain. This book aims to produce the same effect. It is highly practice oriented, and each language-related concept, each technique, and each task is explained with the help of real-life examples.

Writing a book is a long process that takes a lot of time and effort. I truly enjoyed working on this book, and I sincerely hope that you will enjoy reading it, too. Nevertheless, it would be impossible to enjoy this process, or even to finish the book, were it not for the tremendous support, inspiration, and encouragement provided to me by my family, my partner Ted, and my dear friends Eugene, Alex, and Natalia. Thank you for believing in me!

I am also extremely grateful to the Manning team and all the people at Manning who took time to review my book with such care and who gave me valuable feedback along the way. Id like to acknowledge my development editor, Dustin Archibald, who was always there for me with his patience and support, especially when I needed those the most. I am also grateful to Michael Lund, my technical development editor, and Al Krinker, my technical proofreader, for carefully checking the content and the code for this book and providing me with valuable feedback. I would also like to extend my gratitude to Kathleen Rossland, my production editor; Carrie Andrews, my copyeditor; and Susan Honeywell and Azra Dedic, members of the graphics editing team, whose valuable help at the final stages of editing of this book improved it tremendously. Thanks as well to the rest of the Manning team who worked on the production and promotion of this book.