12.4 dIffereNt approaChes to laNguage 335
describe the diverse strategies that are being used to process language for
various purposes.
12.4.1 Symbolic (Rule-Based) Approach
Natural language processing appears to be a strongly symbolic activity.
Words are symbols that stand for objects and concepts in the real world,
and they are put together into sentences that obey well-specified grammar
rules. Hence, for several decades, research on natural language processing
has been dominated by the symbolic approach.
Knowledge about language is explicitly encoded in rules or other forms
of representation. Language is analyzed at various levels to obtain infor-
mation. On this obtained information, certain rules are applied ...