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We feel that the study of computational linguistics is only brought to life by actually writing and running programs. So a textbook on the subject should provide a source of ideas and examples to stimulate the student's initial programming activity. It is much easier to follow a particular computational concept or algorithm, especially to those lacking a thorough computer science backgound, if it is expressed in a familiar programming language than if it is expressed (formally or informally) in some unfamiliar way. Thus, although we have had to introduce new notations for certain declarative notions, we have chosen to base our discussions of programming and algorithms around examples in an actual programming language, namely Prolog.
As the programs presented in this book are intended to be as simple and self-explanatory as possible, we have only used a
subset of Prolog. The reader who has mastered one of the standard textbooks on the language should have no difficulty with the basic programming constructs used. The programs presented here are all available in machine readable form at nominal cost. They are organized as a set of Prolog library files, and
a
complete listing of all the examples presented in the main part of the text, together with other code relevant to the programming exercises, is to be found in Appendix B. They are available on a 720K 3.5" MS-DOS disk for #12.00 (within the UK) or US$25.00 (foreign orders) from Technical Reports, School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences, University of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9QN, UK. The programs are are also available as part of the Sussex University POPLOG distribution (from version 14).
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