The 5 Phases of NLP

Natural Language Processing

Natural language processing (NLP) is the interactions between computers and human language, how to program computers to process and analyze large amounts of natural language data. The technology can accurately extract information and insights contained in the documents as well as categorize and organize the documents themselves. Many different classes of machine-learning algorithms have been applied to natural-language processing tasks. These algorithms take as input a large set of “features” that are generated from the input data.

Lexical Analysis

• Lexical analysis is the process of converting a sequence of characters into a sequence of tokens. A lexer is generally combined with a parser, which together analyzes the syntax of programming languages, web pages, and so forth.
• Lexers and parsers are most often used for compilers but can be used for other computer language tools, such as pretty printers or linters.
• Lexical analysis is also an important analysis during the early stage of natural language processing, where text or sound waves are segmented into words and other units

Syntactic Analysis

• Parsing, syntax analysis, or syntactic analysis is the process of analyzing a string of symbols, either in natural language, computer languages, or data structures, conforming to the rules of formal grammar.
• It is used in the analysis of computer languages, referring to the syntactic analysis of the input code into its component parts to facilitate the writing of compilers and interpreters.
• Grammatical rules are applied to categories and groups of words, not individual words. Syntactic analysis is a very important part of NLP that helps in understanding the grammatical meaning of any sentence.

Semantic Analysis

• Semantic Analysis attempts to understand the meaning of Natural Language.
• Semantic Analysis of Natural Language captures the meaning of the given text while considering context, logical structuring of sentences, and grammar roles.
• 2 parts of Semantic Analysis are (a) Lexical Semantic Analysis and (b) Compositional Semantics Analysis. Semantic analysis can begin with the relationship between individual words.

Discourse Analysis

• Researchers use Discourse analysis to uncover the motivation behind a text.
• It is useful for studying the underlying meaning of a spoken or written text as it considers the social and historical contexts.
• Discourse analysis is a process of performing text or language analysis, involving text interpretation, and understanding the social interactions.

Pragmatic Analysis

• Pragmatic Analysis is part of the process of extracting information from text. It focuses on taking a structured set of text and figuring out the actual meaning of the text.
• It also focuses on the meaning of the words of the time and context. Effects on interpretation can be measured using PA by understanding the communicative and social content

Why Natural Language Processing

NLP has several benefits and applications in various industries, including:

01. Customer Service

NLP can be used to create chatbots that can assist customers with their inquiries, making customer service more efficient and accessible.

02. Marketing

NLP can be used to analyze customer sentiment, identify trends, and improve targeted advertising.

03. Healthcare

NLP can be used to extract information from electronic medical records, assist with diagnosis, and improve patient outcomes.

04. Finance

NLP can be used to analyze financial news, reports, and other data to make informed investment decisions.

05. Human Resources

NLP can be used to automate the process of resume screening, freeing up HR personnel to focus on other tasks.

06. Legal

NLP can be used to analyze legal documents, assist with contract review, and improve the efficiency of the legal process.

Benefits of Natural Language Processing

Improved efficiency

NLP can automate tasks that would otherwise be performed manually, such as document summarization, text classification, and sentiment analysis, saving time and resources.

Better decision-making

NLP can analyze large amounts of text data and provide valuable insights that can inform decision-making in various industries, such as finance, marketing, and healthcare.

Enhanced customer experience

NLP can be used to create chatbots and other conversational interfaces, improving the customer experience and increasing accessibility.

Increased accuracy

NLP can help reduce the risk of human error in language-related tasks, such as contract review and medical diagnosis.

New applications

NLP enables the development of new applications and services that were not previously possible, such as automatic speech recognition and machine translation.