Terminology

Index

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

abstract	[noun] An abstract is a short, concise description of a document, which covers the full scope of its contents.
ambiguity	[noun] Ambiguity is a state whereby a word or sentence can be understood in different ways; the former because the word has more than one meaning or the latter because either the ambiguity of a word is not resolved by the context of the sentence or the structure of the sentence can be analysed in such a way as to convey more than one meaning. Ambiguity can only be resolved by understanding context. The word within its sentence, the sentence within the discourse.
anaphora	[noun] The occurrence of anaphora is characteristic of human language, both written and spoken. It is a linguistic element which makes reference back to another element such as in a relative clause like ‘He picked up the packet of sweets , which [the packet] was on the table’. The most common occurrence of anaphora is in the use of pronouns as in, for example, ‘David went to see a play at the theatre. He enjoyed it [the play] very much’. There other form of anaphora which are more difficult to identify and interpret, such as, ‘Peter wanted to go out as well as John [wanted to go out]; Petra also [wanted to go out]’. The frequent natural occurrence of anaphora is a good illustration, among many, of the difficulty of programming a computer to analyse text and gain a proper understanding.
authoring tools	[phrase] Authoring tools help in the preparation of texts. Generally, they are facilities provided in association with word processing, desktop publishing, and document management systems to aid the author of documents. They typically include an on-line dictionary and thesaurus, spell-checking, grammar-checking, and style-checking, and facilities for structuring, integrating and linking documents. Authoring tools can also be provided which enable users to author better quality documents in languages, other than their own, which they understand to a degree but in which they could not normally compose a document.
Avatar	An Avatar is the virtual representation of a real participant in an activity, in a Virtual Reality environment. So for example, a person could be represented in a meeting held in a virtual environment, or , in a distance learning situation the tutor could be represented by his Avatar in his dealings with students. Obviously, an effective Avatar will need to have human characteristics, including speech and language understanding.
CALL	[a] Computer Aided Language Learning.
character recognition Top	[phrase] Optical Character Recognition of written or printed language requires that a symbolic representation of the language is derived from its spatial form of graphical marks. For most languages this means recognising and transforming characters. There are two cases of character recognition: recognition of printed images, referred to as Optical Character Recognition (OCR), and recognising handwriting, usually known as Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR). OCR from a single printed font family can achieve a very high degree of accuracy. Problems arise when the font is unknown or very decorative or when the quality of the print is poor. In these difficult cases, and in the case of handwriting, good results can only be achieved by using linguistic intelligence. This involves word recognition techniques which use language models, such as lexicons or statistical information about word sequences.
computational linguistics	[phrase] Computational linguistics is a field concerned with the processing of natural language by computers. The term is more often used in an Academic context. It is closely related to Natural Language Processing and Language Engineering.
computer aided language learning	[phrase] Computer Aided language Learning is a form of self tutoring using computer learning packages to teach language; the use of this technique has been increasing for a number of years and the rate of increase has accelerated dramatically as a result of the introduction of the CD-ROM. Generally, there are many ways in which language technologies can help to improve the effectiveness of learning in this way, particularly by being more sensitive to individual needs through a better understanding of each student’s interaction with the course material. In language learning, the availability of on-line dictionaries, thesauri, and grammars also greatly enhances the quality of information available to the student as well as enabling the package to refine its presentation to the student. When speech recognition and generation are added to the package then it also becomes possible to practise pronunciation, with the package able to evaluate performance and tutor the student accordingly.
computer-aided translation	[phrase] Computer aided translation is the process of assisting a human translator in translating from one language to another using computer software tools.
concept search	[phrase] Concept search is a term used in the context of information retrieval to mean that the search is made using a semantic analysis of the search filter matched against a semantic analysis of the database. This technique can be contrasted to simple keyword searches where indices of each database are constructed as inverted files of single words which are then used to fulfil the search criteria. The result from a search which is linguistically based is potentially much more effective in terms of precision (i.e. selecting information which is relevant) and recall (i.e. not missing much of the relevant information available)
continuous speech	[phrase] Continuous speech is when the speaker makes no allowances for the listener (e.g. a speech recognition device) by pausing between words.
controlled language	[phrase] Controlled language is language which has been designed to restrict the size of the vocabulary and/or the structure of language used, in order to make recognition and processing easier. This is an approach which is particularly valid in certain environments; typical uses of controlled language are in areas where precision of language and speed of response is critical such the police and emergency services, aircraft pilots, air traffic control, etc..
corpus	[noun] A corpus is a body of language, either text or speech, which has been collected and annotated for uses, such as: analysis of language to establish its characteristics analysis of human behaviour (in terms of their use of language) in certain situations training a system, usually to adapt its behaviour to particular linguistic circumstances verifying empirically a theory concerning language providing a test set for a language engineering technique or application to establish how well it works in practice There are national corpora of hundreds of millions of words but there are also corpora which are constructed for particular purposes. For example, a corpus could comprise recordings of car drivers speaking to a simulation of a voice operated control system which recognises spoken commands. Such a corpus is then used to help establish the user requirements for a voice operated control system for the market.
dialogue Top	[noun] A dialogue is an interactive, two way alternate flow of language between two individuals, an individual and a machine, or between two machines. Most frequently the term is used in the context of speech but this need not be so. Dialogues could equally take place through the exchange of text or through a mixture of text and speech, for example a deaf person may speak to a system which then respond by displaying text. Speech dialogue can be established by combining speech recognition with simple generation, either from concatenation of stored human speech components or synthesising speech using rules.
dialogue design	[phrase] Dialogue design is an activity needed to enable a machine to converse effectively with a human being. It is particularly important in the application of speech processing to real life systems and plays a crucial role in determining the tolerance of a human being to a conversation with a machine and hence to the successful outcome of the transaction. Good dialogue design probably owes more to psychology and a knowledge of the intended function of the system than to language engineering. The technique known as ‘wizard of Oz’ testing is frequently used to evaluate the effectiveness of a dialogue. Providing a library of speech recognisers and generators together with a graphical tool for structuring their application allows some-one who is neither a speech expert nor a computer programmer to design a dialogue. Facilities are being developed to place control of the design and implementation of dialogue in the hands of the users of a system e.g. market researchers, telemarketing managers, bankers, etc..
dictionary	[noun] A dictionary is a list of the words or a selection of words of a language, arranged in alphabetical order, with a definition of each, possibly also giving its pronunciation, part of speech, etymology, etc.
discourse	[noun] Discourse is a contiguous stretch of language comprising more than one sentence (text) or utterance (speech).
discourse analysis	[phrase] Discourse analysis identifies the linguistic dependencies which exist between sentences or utterances. Successful analysis depends upon the discourse comprising properly formed sentences within a rational context.
document image recognition	[phrase] Document image analysis is closely associated with character recognition but involves the analysis of the document to determine firstly its make-up in terms of graphics, photographs, separating lines, and text and then the structure of the text to identify headings, sub-headings, captions etc. in order to be able to process the text effectively.
domain	[noun] Domain is a term usually applied to the area of application of the language enabled software e.g. banking, insurance, travel, etc.. The significance in language engineering is that the vocabulary of an application is often restricted so the language resource requirements are effectively limited by limiting the domain of application.
evaluation Top	[noun] Evaluation is regarded as a critical part of system development in the world of language technologies. Due to the nature of one of the most important goals, i.e. developing systems which are easy, natural, and comfortable to use, end-users are frequently involved in the evaluation process. In common with IT in general, where evaluation has been generally referred to as ‘testing’, there are three types of evaluation: diagnostic evaluation (system testing) during which the system is tested to ensure that it is free from errors and meets the design specification; adequacy evaluation (user acceptance testing) in which the system is evaluated in terms of its fitness for the purpose i.e. functionality, usability and cost-effectiveness; performance evaluation (performance testing) during which the performance of the system is evaluated in terms of the design parameters established at the outset, such as response times in an interactive system, network transit times in communications systems, and precision and recall in information retrieval.
finite state machine (fsm) Top	[phrase] a finite state machine comprises a number of states, which are represented in a data structure, and functions which determine changes of state resulting from input and trigger consequent output. They are rather like dynamic decision tables. In language processing they are used for applications where an approximation of proper grammatical description is sufficient to provide the results required.
formalism	[noun] A formalism is a means to represent the rules used in the establishment of a models of linguistic knowledge.
generate	[verb] To generate ,in the context of language technologies, is to produce language in one form from another form of language or information; see natural language generation.
globalisation Top	[noun] Globalisation is the process of preparing software for use in any language and cultural environment either by designing it to be usable in this way or by adding facilities to existing software to facilitate subsequent localisation. It is synonymous with Internationalisation.
grammar	[noun] Grammar is used to refer to a number of areas of knowledge: traditionally, the morphological and syntactic properties of a human language; a system of structural rules which are the basis of linguistic generation and understanding; a language theory or a model of linguistic competence. A grammar can be a systematic description of the regularities of a human language but the features of such grammars vary according to their intended application. In language engineering a grammar (recorded electronically) most commonly describes the structure of a language at different levels: word (morphological grammar), phrase, sentence, etc.. A grammar can deal with structure both in terms of surface (syntax) and meaning (semantics and discourse).
grammar checker	[phrase] A grammar checker is a software facility which checks text for the correctness of its grammar. It is usually embedded in a word processor or desktop publishing package
human aided machine translation	[phrase] Human aided machine translation is the process of machine translation which is improved by the assistance of a human being.
human language technologies Top	[phrase] Human Language Technologies are technologies which are concerned with different aspects of language engineering. At the broadest level these technologies cover: applying language knowledge to human machine interaction; providing automated multi-linguality in systems; managing information recorded as human language. These technologies include: speech recognition, spoken language understanding, and speech generation; speaker identification and verification; dialogue design and analysis controlled language design and processing document image analysis, optical character recognition, and handwriting recognition: recognition and understanding of multi-modal human communication computer assisted text creation and editing; language analysis and understanding; information extraction and summarisation language generation; (synthetic) speech generation language identification, machine translation and computer aided translation. production of language resources and the tools to support it, evaluation.
hidden Markov model	[phrase] A hidden Markov model (HMM) is like a finite state machine in which not only transitions are probabilistic but also output. HMMs are commonly used in speech recognition systems to help to determine the words represented by the sound wave forms captured. In this case, an HMM describes the realisation of a concatenation of elementary processes which represents the sequence of acoustic parameters extracted from a human utterance
hypertext	[noun] Hypertext is a method commonly used for help files and in the World Wide Web whereby highlighted text is used to provide a link (rather like an index) to related text ( often a more detailed explanation of the item highlighted
index Top	[verb] To index is to build a concise means of reference to information within a database which, for textual information, can be based on keywords or concepts.
information extraction	[phrase] Information extraction is the process of selecting information from a database using linguistic. It is distinguished from conventional information retrieval in that the information is selected and delivered to tight specifications, using templates, and is often delivered in the form of fragments of documents.
information retrieval	[phrase] Information retrieval is usually used as a generic term to cover the access to and delivery of information from natural language databases by whatever method. Usually the information is delivered in the form of complete documents.
interlingua	[noun] An Interlingua is an invented language which can be used as a common, formal representation into which source natural language may be translated and from which target natural language can be generated.
internationalisation	[noun] Internationalisation is the process of preparing software for use in any language and cultural environment either by designing it to be usable in this way or by adding facilities to existing software to facilitate subsequent localisation. Internationalisation is synonymous with the term Globalisation. However the latter is becoming less used in the language context because it has become used in recent years in a much wider context.
interpret	[verb] To interpret is, generally, to attribute meaning to language; but also, to translate from one language to another, usually orally, in real-time.
language enabled	[phrase] Language enabled describes a computer application which has been improved in functionality, performance, and/or presentation by the use of language engineering
language engineering	[phrase] Language engineering is the application of knowledge of language to the development of computer systems which can recognise, understand, interpret and generate human language in all its forms.
language resources Top	[phrase] Language resources are essential components of language engineering. They are one of the main ways of representing the knowledge of language which is used for the analytical work leading to recognition and understanding. The work of producing and maintaining language resources is a huge task. Resources may be produced, according to standard formats and protocols to enable access, in many EU languages, by research laboratories and public institutions. Many of these resources are being made available through the European Language Resources Association (ELRA). Lexicons, terminology databases dictionaries of proper names, terminology databases, grammars, wordnets, and corpora are all repositories of language knowledge.
lemmatise	[verb] To lemmatise is to break an inflected word into its root (base form) and ending components.
lexicon	[noun] A lexicon is a repository of words and knowledge about those words. This knowledge may include details of the grammatical structure of each word (morphology), the sound structure (phonology), its part of speech, and the meaning of the word in different textual contexts, e.g. depending on the word or punctuation mark before or after it. Lexicons may be ordered either alphabetically or semantically. A useful lexicon may have hundreds of thousands of entries. Lexicons are needed for every language of application. There are a number of special cases which are usually researched and produced separately from general purpose lexicons: dictionaries of proper names, terminology databases, and wordnets.
localise	[verb] To localise is to adapt software to the local requirements in terms of language and culture (including legal practice and business conventions, for example). Localisation is more likely to be efficient and cost effective if systems are designed taking localisation into account.
machine translation	[phrase] Machine translation is the process of automatically translating from one language to another by computer.
machine aided translation	[phrase] Machine aided translation is synonymous with computer-aided translation.
machine readable dictionary	[phrase] A machine readable dictionary is one which can be read by computer software.
mark up Top	[verb] To mark up is to annotate language in order to have a record of certain of its properties. For example, a document can be marked up in such a way that its structure and presentation are described so that it can be reproduced by software other than that used for its creation. Language can also be marked up to record its syntactical and semantic properties in preparation for future use in developing an application, or for linguistic research.
morpheme	[noun] A morpheme is the smallest meaningful element of language i.e. as a semantic element it cannot be divided into smaller elements.
morphology	[noun] Morphology is the science of the structure of words
multi-lingual	[adjective] Multi-lingual is properly used to mean that something exists in a form that can handle several languages but is, in practice, often used to describe the characteristic that versions exist for several languages.
natural language generation Top	[phrase] A structured representation of a text can be used as the basis for generating natural language. An interpretation of structured data or the underlying meaning of a sentence or phrase can be mapped into a surface string in a selected fashion; either in a chosen language or according to stylistic specifications by a text planning system.
natural language processing	[phrase] Natural language processing is a term in use since the 1980s to define a class of software systems which handle text intelligently.
OCR	[a] Optical Character Recognition.
Optical Character Recognition Top	[phrase] Recognition of written or printed language requires that a symbolic representation of the language is derived from its spatial form of graphical marks. For most languages this means recognising and transforming characters. There are two cases of character recognition: recognition of printed images, referred to as Optical Character Recognition (OCR), and recognising handwriting, usually known as Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR). OCR from a single printed font family can achieve a very high degree of accuracy. Problems arise when the font is unknown or very decorative or when the quality of the print is poor. In these difficult cases, and in the case of handwriting, good results can only be achieved by using ICR. This involves word recognition techniques which use language models, such as lexicons or statistical information about word sequences.
onomastics	[noun] Onomastics is the scientific investigation of proper names.
parse	[verb] To parse is to analyse language in order to establish its structure and relationships at a the levels of syntax and/or semantics.
part of speech Top	[phrase] The element in a classification of words according to form and meaning. The current classification in use in Europe, is based on the work of Dionsyios Thrax (a grammarian of the first century BC), and comprises nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, articles, pronouns, prepositions, and conjunctions.
phoneme	[noun] A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound (analogous to a morpheme) which can be identified from an acoustic flow of speech and which is semantically distinct..
proper names	[phrase] A proper name is the name of a place, person, animal, or thing. Dictionaries of proper names are essential to effective understanding of language, at least so that they can be recognised within their context as places, objects, or person, or maybe animals. They take on a special significance in many applications, however, where the name is key to the application such as in a voice operated navigation system or in a holiday reservations system or railway timetable information system based on automated call handling.
semantics	[noun] Semantics is the analysis of language to determine meaning.
shallow parser Top	[phrase] A shallow parser is computer software which parses language to a point where a rudimentary level of grammatical structure and meaning can be realised; this is often used in order to identify passages of text which can then be analysed in further depth to fulfil the particular objective.
speaker identification	[phrase] A human voice is as unique to an individual as a fingerprint. This makes it possible to identify a speaker and to record the characteristics of his or her voice for use as the basis for future verification.
speaker independent	[phrase] Speaker independent is a term applied to a speech recognition system which is capable of recognising speech regardless of the speaker, i.e. it does not need to be trained to recognise individual speakers.
speaker verification	[phrase] Once a human voice has been identified. Since it is unique, this makes it possible to use this identification as the basis for verifying that an individual is entitled to access a service or a resource. The types of problems which have to be overcome are, for example, recognising that the speech is not recorded, selecting the voice through noise (either in the environment or the transfer medium), and identifying reliably despite temporary changes (such as caused by illness).
speech recognition	[phrase] The sound of speech is received by a computer in analogue wave forms which are analysed to identify the units of sound (phonemes) which make up words. Statistical models of phonemes and words are used to recognise either discrete or continuous speech input. The production of quality statistical models requires extensive training samples (corpora) and vast quantities of speech have been collected and continue to be collected for this purpose. There are a number of significant problems to be overcome if speech is to become a commonly used medium for dealing with a computer. The first of these is the ability to recognise continuous, or spontaneous, speech rather than speech which is deliberately delivered by the speaker as a series of discrete words separated by a pause. The next is to recognise any speaker, avoiding the need to train the system to recognise the speech of a particular individual. There is also the serious problem of the noise which can interfere with recognition, either from the environment in which the speaker uses the system or through noise introduced by the transmission medium, the telephone line, for example. Noise reduction, signal enhancement and key word spotting can be used to allow accurate and robust recognition in noisy environments or over telecommunications networks. Finally, there are the problems of dealing with regional accents, dialects, language spoken by a foreigner, and language which is spoken ungrammatically, which is probably most of it.
speech synthesis	[phrase] Speech is synthesised from filled templates, by playing ‘canned’ recordings or concatenating units of speech (phonemes, words) together. Speech generated has to account for aspects such as intensity, duration and stress in order to produce a continuous and natural response.
speech to text	[phrase] Speech to text is the process of analysing speech and producing its textual equivalent; a typical example of a speech to text application is in dictation systems.
spell checker	[phrase] A spell checker is software which checks the spelling of words, usually embedded in another program such as a word processor, desktop publishing package, spreadsheet, presentation package, etc..
spontaneous speech	[phrase] Spontaneous speech is often used synonymously with continuous speech but more explicitly recognising that there are other characteristics of speech which make it difficult to understand, such as the tendency for people not to speak grammatically correctly or to speak in ways which make it difficult to maintain consistent context.
style checker	[phrase] A style checker is software which checks a document to ensure that it conforms to a template defining the structure of the text and the document containing it; also the checking of the use of phrases or sentences in a predefined way.
summarise	[verb] To summarise is to produce a concise description of a document, which covers the full scope of its contents.
syllable	[noun] A syllable is a unit of pronunciation which is more than a single sound (see phoneme above) and smaller than a word.
syntax	[noun] Syntax is the system of rules which describe how sentences can be formed from basic elements of language, i.e. morphemes, words and parts of speech.
tag Top	[verb] To tag is to annotate a corpus by attaching information to the words, which describes, for example, the grammatical context of the words and/or associations with other words.
terminology	[noun] Terminology is increasingly important in today’s complex technological environment where there is a host of terminologies which need to be recorded, structured, and made available for language enhanced applications. Many of the most cost-effective applications of language engineering, such as multi-lingual technical document management and machine translation, depend on the availability of the appropriate terminology banks.
text	[noun] The term text is used frequently to distinguish written, printed, or symbolically recorded (using character encoding) language from speech.
text alignment	[phrase] Text alignment is the process of organising different language versions of a text in order to be able to identify equivalent terms, phrases, or expressions.
text to speech	[phrase] Text to speech is the process of producing the speech equivalent of text; a typical example of a text to speech application is an automatic announcement system at an airport or railway station.
thesaurus	[noun] A thesaurus is a dictionary of synonyms
translate	[verb] To translate is to transform a text from one language to another in a way which preserves the original meaning.
translation memory	[phrase] A translation memory is a system which builds knowledge about translating from one language to another by remembering and re-using previous translations.
translator’s workbench	[phrase] A translator’s workbench is a software system providing a working environment for a human translator, which offers a range of aids such as on-line dictionaries, thesauri, translation memories, etc..
user modelling Top	[phrase] User modelling is a term used most often in dialogue based speech recognition to describe where there is a component which attempts to be sensitive to the various sorts of users that the system may encounter
utterance	[noun] An utterance is the string of sounds produced by a speaker between two pauses.
version	[noun] A version is an edition of a document which is recorded as different from the previous edition. It is used in configuration control and in Document Management systems.
version control	[phrase] Version control is the management of the production, recording, and issue of documents as in configuration control.
voice authentication	[noun] Voice authentication is synonymous with speaker verification
voice recognition	[noun] voice recognition is synonymous with speech recognition
wizard of Oz testing Top	[phrase] Wizard of Oz testing is testing in which the automated machine component is substituted by some form of human intervention but in such a way that the user participating in the test is unaware of the substitution. It is frequently used in the process of evaluation, particularly to verify the effectiveness of a dialogue based system.
wordnet	[noun] A wordnet is a network which models the relationships between words, for example, synonyms, antonyms, hyponyms, and so on. Such networks can be invaluable in applications like information retrieval, translator workbenches, and intelligent office automation facilities for authoring.