NLP and Language Challenge

1. Informatica Umanistica LM
Editing e analisi del Documento Digitale
(Natural Language Processing)
stefano.lariccia@uniroma1.it
21 marzo 2012
30 maggio 2012
-
Stefano Lariccia – Digilab – Open Giovanni Toffoli
Knowledge
Sapienza Università di Roma Link Informatica Ricerca e Sviluppo

2. Introduzione al corso
• La storia della tecnologia dell’ultimo secolo ci ha abituato ad una sequenza impressionante di conquiste
• L’evoluzione della tecnologia sembra essere governata da leggi e modelli – come la legge di Kurzweil dei
ritorni accelerati - che sono un fenomeno uovo nell’orizzonte delle società umane
• Gli ingredienti fondamentali di questo percorso sono:
1. La macchina universale o (macchina di Turing)
2. Gli algoritmi
3. Le reti ed i grafi
4. Gli automi
5. L’intelligenza diffusa
6. Il concetto di Società Aperta e di Conoscenza come Bene Comune
7. Gli Standard per la interoperabilità
8. L’ estremizzazione del concetto di «universale»
9. La virtualizzazione e le metafore ad essa correlate
10. La Progettualità evolutiva, il desiderio di anticipare il futuro
(teleologia inversa)

3. NLP Lectio [1]
• Internet e soprattutto l’avvento del WorldWideWeb, hanno
creato un ecosistema linguistico /concettuale ai cui sviluppi
attendono ormai milioni di ricercatori.
• E in questo ecosistema, giornalmente alimentato dai prodotti
del metabolismo culturale planetario, sfruttandone l’analisi
statistica, con l’ausilio di potenti automi addestrati al symbol
crunching – masticazione di simboli:
• dalla comprensione dei linguaggi, all’analisi lessicale,
all’estrazione di significato), si possono sviluppare branche del
sapere oggi ancora ignote e difficilmente immaginabili per il
vasto pubblico, ma cariche di interessi e di potenzialità sia sul
piano economico - applicativo che sul piano logico-cognitivo.

4. Lectio [2]
• L’avvento di queste opportunità, come suggerisce la legge dei ritorni
accellerati di Kurzweil, è prevedibile in tempi molto rapidi, tempi
che corrispondono alla durata di un corso di laurea quinquennale.
• E le potenzialità di cui riferiamo sono di grande interesse proprio,
tra gli altri, per gli umanisti che per primi hanno inaugurato e
tradizionalmente coltivato l’analisi critica dei testi e dei segni come
maestria artigianale fondamentale per attendere all’
interpretazione della storia umana e per tentare con mezzi sempre
più sofisticati il progetto della “visione del futuro”.

5. NLP Lectio [4]
NLTK Tutorial: Introduction to Natural
Language Processing
Steven Bird Ewan KleinEdward Loper
• Revision 1.66, 7 Apr 2005
• Copyright © 2005
• This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
• License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/ or
• send a letter to Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA.
The single and shortest definition of civilization may be the word language...
Civilization, if it means
something concrete, is the conscious but unprogrammed mechanism by
which humans communicate.
And through communication they live with each other, think, create, and act.
—John Ralston Saul

6. NLP Lectio [5]
1. The Language Challenge
• Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA.
Language is the chief manifestation of human intelligence.
Through language we express basic
needs and lofty aspirations, technical know-how and flights
of fantasy. Ideas are shared over great
separations of distance and time.

7. NLP Lectio [6]
1. The Language Challenge
• Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA.
The following samples from English illustrate the richness of
language:
1.
a. Overhead the day drives level and grey, hiding the sun by a flight of grey spears.
(William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying, 1935)
b. When using the toaster please ensure that the exhaust fan is turned on. (sign in
dormitory kitchen)
c. Amiodarone weakly inhibited CYP2C9, CYP2D6, and CYP3A4-mediated activities
with Ki values of 45.1-271.6 µM (Medline)
d. Iraqi Head Seeks Arms (spoof headline,
http://www.snopes.com/humor/nonsense/head97.htm)
e. The earnest prayer of a righteous man has great power and wonderful results.
(James
5:16b)

8. NLP Lectio [7]
1. The Language Challenge
• Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA.
The following samples from English illustrate the richness of
language:
1.
a. Overhead the day drives level and grey, hiding the sun by a flight of grey spears.
(William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying, 1935)
b. When using the toaster please ensure that the exhaust fan is turned on. (sign in
dormitory kitchen)
c. Amiodarone weakly inhibited CYP2C9, CYP2D6, and CYP3A4-mediated activities
with Ki values of 45.1-271.6 µM (Medline)
d. Iraqi Head Seeks Arms (spoof headline,
http://www.snopes.com/humor/nonsense/head97.htm)
e. The earnest prayer of a righteous man has great power and wonderful results.
(James
5:16b)

9. NLP Lectio [8]
1. The Language Challenge
• Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA.
The importance of language to science and the arts is
matched in significance by the cultural
treasure that is inherent in language. Each of the world’s
~7,000 human languages is rich in unique
respects, in its oral histories and creation legends, down to
its grammatical constructions and its
very words and their nuances of meaning. Threatened
remnant cultures have words to distinguish
plant subspecies according to therapeutic uses which are
unknown to science.

10. NLP Lectio [9]
1. The Language Challenge
• Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA.
Languages evolve over time as they come into contact with each
other and they provide a unique window onto human
pre-history. Technological change gives rise to new words like
weblog and new morphemes like e- and cyber-. In many parts of
the world, small linguistic variations from one town to the next
add up to a completely different language in the space of a half-
hour drive.
For its breathtaking complexity and diversity, human language is
as a colourful tapestry stretching through time and space.

11. NLP Lectio [10]
1. The Language Challenge
• Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA.
Languages evolve over time as they come into contact with each
other and they provide a unique window onto human
pre-history. Technological change gives rise to new words like
weblog and new morphemes like e- and cyber-. In many parts of
the world, small linguistic variations from one town to the next
add up to a completely different language in the space of a half-
hour drive.
For its breathtaking complexity and diversity, human language is
as a colourful tapestry stretching through time and space.

12. Resources and references
Resource type and name: References:
Plone; A definitive Guide to Plone
Exe LO Editor Manual http://wikieducator.org/Online_manual/E
mbedding_eXe_resources