CAN COMPUTERS meaningfully process human language? If this

is difficult, why? If this is possible, how? This book introduces the

reader to the fascinating science of computational linguistics and

automatic natural language processing, which combines linguistics

and artificial intelligence.

The main part of the book is devoted to the explanation of the inner

working of a linguistic processor, a software module in charge

of translating natural language input into a representation directly

usable traditional artificial intelligence applications and, vice versa,

of translating their answer into human language.

Overall emphasis in the book is made on a well-elaborated,

though—for a number of historical reasons—so far little-known in

the literature computational linguistic model called Meaning

⇔ Text Theory. For comparison, other models and formalisms

are considered in detail.

The book is mainly oriented to researchers and students interested

in applications of natural language processing techniques to Spanish

language. In particular, most of the examples given in the book deal

with Spanish language material—which is a feature of the book distinguishing

it from other books on natural language processing.

However, our main exposition is sufficiently general to be applicable

to a wide range of languages.

Specifically, it was taken into account that many readers of the

book will be Spanish native speakers. For them, some comments on

the English terminology, as well as a short English-Spanish dictionary

of technical terms used in the book, were included. Still, reading

the book in English will help Spanish-speaking readers to become

familiar with the style and terminology used in the scientific literature

on the subject.