This is a textbook that aims to teach the reader about useful, well-understood techniques for natural language processing (NLP). In the chapters that follow, we will rarely have much to say about the history of the field, about approaches whose utility is doubtful or about techniques that are, as yet, poorly understood. Occasionally, the further reading sections that end each chapter will provide some pointers into the history, but that is not their primary function. Accordingly, this introductory chapter provides a thumbnail sketch of the history of NLP so that those new to the field can get some slight sense of what has gone on in the first three decades of work in computational linguistics.

Chris Mellish's main research is on Natural Language Generation, both theoretical and applied aspects. On the theoretical side, he is interested in architectures, generation algorithms and input representation. On the applied side, he is interested in the costs and benefits of NLG and how we can find application niches where NLG is worthwhile. he is also interested in how generated text can affect the emotions of the reader. One of his main interests is facilitating the building of reusable software modules for NLG.