What is Natural Language Processing (NLP)?

Since I work in computer science, although NLP is a field primarily at the intersection of computer science and linguistics, I will take a computer science perspective on it.

I will base this largely on Prof. Bo Waggoner’s discussion of What is Computer Science?, so you should first check it out.

Short Answer

Since “computer science is the study of algorithms: step-by-step procedures for solving problems or accomplishing tasks.”, NLP would simply be the computer science of natural language. To be complete “NLP is the study of step-by-step procedures for accomplishing tasks or solving problems involving natural language”.

Does this mean NLP is just about writing programs that work with natural language? No! It is more because of the all the things that are encompassed in both computer science and in linguistics, and infinite combination there in.

Medium Answer

Considering Science is made of Maths, Engineering, and Natural Sciences, and CS consists of algorithmic study of them, what is NLP?.

NLP encompasses the elements of CS that are involved in Maths, Engineering, and particular subset of Natural Science involving language (in its broadest sense), and could be defined as “algorithmic maths” of languages, “algorithmic engineering” for languages, and “algorithmic understanding” of language phonemena (computational linguistics?).

Particularly looking at the looking in and looking out perspectives of Prof. Waggoner, NLP is subset of CS that looks more out than in.

Maths, out: How can we use math to talk about language? (Mathematical Linguistics?) Engineering, out: How can we improve CS for language? (NLP Engineering) Natural Sciences, out: How can we use CS to better work with language? (Computational Linguistics)

Long Answer

Continuing on Prof. Waggoner’s answer - I am still climbing the mountain, depending on why you are here - happy to join the trail with you, happy to have you join us at your own pace or not at all.