What Is Natural Language Processing?

Natural Language Processing (NLP) makes it possible for computers to understand the

human language.

Probably, the most popular examples of NLP in action are virtual assistants, like Google
Assist, Siri, and Alexa. NLP understands and translates the human language, like “Hey
Siri, where is the nearest gas station?” into numbers, making it easy for machines to
understand.

Another well-known application of NLP are chatbots, which can help you solve issues
while performing natural language generation – in other words, holding a conversation
in plain English!

There are many other everyday apps you use, where you’ve probably encountered NLP
without even noticing. Text recommendations when writing an email, offering to
translate a Facebook post written in a different language, or filtering unwanted
promotional emails into your spam folder. 

In a nutshell, the goal of Natural Language Processing is to make human language ‒

which is complex, ambiguous, and extremely diverse ‒ easy for machines to
understand. 

How does it work? First, it applies linguistics to analyze the grammatical structure and
the meaning of words, then it uses algorithms to build intelligent systems capable of
performing different tasks.   

NLP, AI, Machine Learning: What’s the Difference?

Natural Language Processing (NLP), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and machine learning
(ML) are sometimes used interchangeably, so you may get your wires crossed when
trying to differentiate between the three. 

The first thing to know is that NLP and machine learning are both subsets of Artificial
Intelligence. 

AI is an umbrella term for machines that can simulate human intelligence. AI

encompasses systems that mimic cognitive capabilities, like learning from examples
and solving problems. This covers a wide range of applications, from self-driving cars to
predictive systems. 

Natural Language Processing (NLP) deals with how computers understand and

translate human language. With NLP, machines can make sense of written or spoken
text and perform tasks like translation, keyword extraction, topic classification, and
more.  

But to automate these processes and deliver accurate responses, you’ll need machine
learning. Machine learning is the process of applying algorithms that teach machines
how to automatically learn and improve from experience without being explicitly
programmed. 

AI-powered chatbots, for example, use NLP to interpret what users say and what they
intend to do, and machine learning to automatically deliver more accurate responses by
learning from past interactions. 

NLP Techniques 
Natural Language Processing (NLP) applies two techniques to help computers
understand text: syntactic analysis and semantic analysis. 

Syntactic Analysis

Syntactic analysis ‒ or parsing ‒ analyzes text using basic grammar rules to identify
sentence structure, how words are organized, and how words relate to each other. 

Some of its main sub-tasks include:

 Tokenization consists of breaking up a text into smaller parts

called tokens (which can be sentences or words) to make text easier to handle. 
 Part of speech tagging (PoS tagging) labels tokens as verb, adverb,
adjective, noun, etc. This helps infer the meaning of a word (for example, the
word “book” means different things if used as a verb or a noun).
 Lemmatization & stemming consist of reducing inflected words to their base
form to make them easier to analyze. 
 Stop-word removal removes frequently occuring words that don’t add any
semantic value, such as I, they, have, like, yours, etc. 

Semantic Analysis

Semantic analysis focuses on capturing the meaning of text. First, it studies the
meaning of each individual word (lexical semantics). Then, it looks at the combination of
words and what they mean in context. The main sub-tasks of semantic analysis are:

 Word sense disambiguation tries to identify in which sense a word is being

used in a given context. 
 Relationship extraction attempts to understand how entities (places, persons,
organizations, etc) relate to each other in a text.
5 Use Cases of NLP in Business 
NLP tools are helping companies understand how their customers perceive them across
all channels of communication, whether emails, product reviews, social media posts,
surveys, and more. 

Not only can AI tools be used to understand online conversations and how customers
are talking about businesses, they can also be used to automate repetitive and time-
consuming tasks, increase efficiency, and enable workers to focus on more fulfilling
tasks.

Here are some of the main applications of NLP in business: 

Sentiment Analysis

Sentiment analysis identifies emotions in text and classifies opinions as positive,

negative, or neutral. You can see how it works by pasting text into this free sentiment
analysis tool.

By analyzing social media posts, product reviews, or online surveys, companies can
gain insight into how customers feel about brands or products. For example, you
could analyze tweets mentioning your brand in real-time and detect comments from
angry customers right away. 

Maybe you want to send out a survey to find out how customers feel about your level of
customer service. By analyzing open-ended responses to NPS surveys, you can
determine which aspects of your customer service receive positive or negative
feedback.

Language Translation

Machine translation technology has seen great improvement over the past few years,
with Facebook’s translations achieving superhuman performance in 2019.

Translation tools enable businesses to communicate in different languages, helping

them improve their global communication or break into new markets.

You can also train translation tools to understand specific terminology in any given
industry, like finance or medicine. So you don’t have to worry about inaccurate
translations that are common with generic translation tools.

Text Extraction 

Text extraction enables you to pull out pre-defined information from text. If you deal with
large amounts of data, this tool helps you recognize and extract relevant keywords and
features (like product codes, colors, and specs), and named entities (like names of
people, locations, company names, emails, etc).

Companies can use text extraction to automatically find key terms in legal documents,
identify the main words mentioned in customer support tickets, or pull out product
specifications from a paragraph of text, among many other applications. Sounds
interesting? Here’s a keyword extraction tool you can try. 

Chatbots

Chatbots are AI systems designed to interact with humans through text or speech. 

The use of chatbots for customer care is on the rise, due to their ability to offer 24/7
assistance (speeding up response times), handle multiple queries simultaneously, and
free up human agents from answering repetitive questions. 

Chatbots actively learn from each interaction and get better at understanding user
intent, so you can rely on them to perform repetitive and simple tasks. If they come
across a customer query they’re not able to respond to, they’ll pass it onto a human
agent.

Topic Classification

Topic classification helps you organize unstructured text into categories. For

companies, it’s a great way of gaining insights from customer feedback. 

Imagine you’d like to analyze hundreds of open-ended responses to NPS surveys. How
many responses mention your customer support? What percentage of customers talk
about “Pricing”? With this topic classifier for NPS feedback, you’ll have all your data
tagged in seconds.  

Also, you can use topic classification to automate the process of tagging incoming
support tickets and automatically route them to the right person.

Closing
Natural Language Processing (NLP) is the part of AI that studies how machines interact
with human language. NLP works behind the scenes to enhance tools we use every
day, like chatbots, spell-checkers, or language translators.   

Combined with machine learning algorithms, NLP creates systems that learn to perform
tasks on their own and get better through experience. NLP-powered tools can help you
classify social media posts by sentiment, or extract named entities from business
emails, among many other things. 
MonkeyLearn is a user-friendly AI platform that helps you get started with NLP in a very
simple way, using pre-trained models or building customized solutions to fit your needs. 

A Simple Introduction to
Natural Language
Processing
Dr. Michael J. Garbade

Natural Language Processing is the technology used to aid

computers to understand the human’s natural language.

It’s not an easy task teaching machines to understand how we

communicate.

Leand Romaf, an experienced software engineer who is passionate

at teaching people how artificial intelligence systems work, says
that “in recent years, there have been significant breakthroughs in
empowering computers to understand language just as we do.”

This article will give a simple introduction to Natural Language

Processing and how it can be achieved.
What is Natural Language Processing?
Natural Language Processing, usually shortened as NLP, is a
branch of artificial intelligence that deals with the interaction
between computers and humans using the natural language.

The ultimate objective of NLP is to read, decipher, understand,

and make sense of the human languages in a manner that is
valuable.

Most NLP techniques rely on machine learning to derive meaning

from human languages.

In fact, a typical interaction between humans and machines using

Natural Language Processing could go as follows:

1. A human talks to the machine

2. The machine captures the audio

3. Audio to text conversion takes place

4. Processing of the text’s data

5. Data to audio conversion takes place

6. The machine responds to the human by playing the audio file

What is NLP used for?

Natural Language Processing is the driving force behind the
following common applications:

 Language translation applications such as Google Translate

 Word Processors such as Microsoft Word and Grammarly

that employ NLP to check grammatical accuracy of texts.

 Interactive Voice Response (IVR) applications used in call

centers to respond to certain users’ requests.

 Personal assistant applications such as OK Google, Siri,

Cortana, and Alexa.

Why is NLP difficult?

Natural Language processing is considered a difficult problem in
computer science. It’s the nature of the human language that
makes NLP difficult.

The rules that dictate the passing of information using natural

languages are not easy for computers to understand.
Some of these rules can be high-leveled and abstract; for example,
when someone uses a sarcastic remark to pass information.

On the other hand, some of these rules can be low-levelled; for

example, using the character “s” to signify the plurality of items.

Comprehensively understanding the human language requires

understanding both the words and how the concepts are
connected to deliver the intended message.

While humans can easily master a language, the ambiguity and

imprecise characteristics of the natural languages are what make
NLP difficult for machines to implement.

How does Natural Language Processing

Works?
NLP entails applying algorithms to identify and extract the natural
language rules such that the unstructured language data is
converted into a form that computers can understand.

When the text has been provided, the computer will utilize
algorithms to extract meaning associated with every sentence and
collect the essential data from them.

Sometimes, the computer may fail to understand the meaning of a

sentence well, leading to obscure results.
For example, a humorous incident occurred in the 1950s during
the translation of some words between the English and the
Russian languages.

Here is the biblical sentence that required translation:

“The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

Here is the result when the sentence was translated to Russian and
back to English:

“The vodka is good, but the meat is rotten.”

What are the techniques used in NLP?

Syntactic analysis and semantic analysis are the main techniques
used to complete Natural Language Processing tasks.

Here is a description on how they can be used.

1. Syntax
Syntax refers to the arrangement of words in a sentence such that
they make grammatical sense.

In NLP, syntactic analysis is used to assess how the natural

language aligns with the grammatical rules.
Computer algorithms are used to apply grammatical rules to a
group of words and derive meaning from them.

Here are some syntax techniques that can be used:

 Lemmatization: It entails reducing the various inflected

forms of a word into a single form for easy analysis.

 Morphological segmentation: It involves dividing words

into individual units called morphemes.

 Word segmentation: It involves dividing a large piece of

continuous text into distinct units.

 Part-of-speech tagging: It involves identifying the part of

speech for every word.

 Parsing: It involves undertaking grammatical analysis for

the provided sentence.

 Sentence breaking: It involves placing sentence

boundaries on a large piece of text.

 Stemming: It involves cutting the inflected words to their

root form.
2. Semantics
Semantics refers to the meaning that is conveyed by a text.
Semantic analysis is one of the difficult aspects of Natural
Language Processing that has not been fully resolved yet.

It involves applying computer algorithms to understand the

meaning and interpretation of words and how sentences are
structured.

Here are some techniques in semantic analysis:

 Named entity recognition (NER): It involves

determining the parts of a text that can be identified and
categorized into preset groups. Examples of such groups
include names of people and names of places.

 Word sense disambiguation: It involves giving meaning

to a word based on the context.

 Natural language generation: It involves using databases

to derive semantic intentions and convert them into human
language.

Wrapping up
Natural Language Processing plays a critical role in supporting
machine-human interactions.
As more research is being carried in this field, we expect to see
more breakthroughs that will make machines smarter at
recognizing and understanding the human language.