Natural language processing (NLP)

NLP is a highly interdisciplinary field, close to Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Sciences, Philosophy of Language, Linguistics, Computer Science, Statistics, and Engineering. It is not a new area of study, yet it is very lively and constantly evolving. NLP encompasses a very wide range of applications; it is aimed to analyse the many levels of linguistic description, from phonology to pragmatics, and to deal with spoken and written language. Language plays a fundamental role in eParticipation, since it is the medium through which all the communication takes place: it is the language we find in institutional sites to explain to citizens how to obtain a particular service, it is the language of political discourse, the language of people expressing political opinions on a non official forum. NLP can be an instrument to deal with all these types of messages in an automatic or semiautomatic way.

• FAQ: frequently asked questions