Constraint Solving and Language Processing

Book excerpt: This volume contains selected and thoroughly revised papers plus contributions from invited speakers presented at the First International Workshop on C- straint Solving and Language Processing, held in Roskilde, Denmark, September 1–3, 2004. Constraint Programming and Constraint Solving, in particular Constraint Logic Programming, appear to be a very promising platform, perhaps the most promising present platform, for bringing forward the state of the art in natural language processing, this due to the naturalness in speci?cation and the direct relation to e?cient implementation. Language, in the present context, may - fer to written and spoken language, formal and semiformal language, and even general input data to multimodal and pervasive systems, which can be handled in very much the same ways using constraint programming. The notion of constraints, with slightly di?ering meanings, apply in the ch- acterization of linguistic and cognitive phenomena, in formalized linguistic m- els as well as in implementation-oriented frameworks. Programming techniques for constraint solving have been, and still are, in a period with rapid devel- ment of new e?cient methods and paradigms from which language processing can pro?t. A common metaphor for human language processing is one big c- straintsolvingprocessinwhichthedi?erent(-lyspeci?ed)linguisticandcognitive phases take place in parallel and with mutual cooperation, which ?ts quite well with current constraint programming paradigms.