Although natural language processing has come far, the technology has not achieved a major impact on society. Is this because of some fundamental limitation that cannot be overcome? Or because there has not been enough time to refine and apply theoretical work already done? Editors Madeleine Bates and Ralph Weischedel believe it is neither; they feel that several critical issues have never been adequately addressed in either theoretical or applied work, and they have invited capable researchers in the field to do that in Challenges in Natural Language Processing. This volume will be of interest to researchers of computational linguistics in academic and non-academic settings and to graduate students in computational linguistics, artificial intelligence and linguistics.

In the course of one's research, the expediency of meeting contractual and other externally imposed deadlines too often seems to take priority over what may be more significant research findings in the longer run. Such is the case with this volume which, despite our best intentions, has been put aside time and again since 1971 in favor of what seemed to be more urgent matters. Despite this delay, to our knowledge the principal research results and documentation presented here have not been superseded by other publications. The background of this endeavor may be of some historical interest, especially to those who agree that research is not a straightforward, mechanistic process whose outcome or even direction is known in ad vance. In the process of this brief recounting, we would like to express our gratitude to those individuals and organizations who facilitated and supported our efforts. We were introduced to the Beale, Kendall and Mann algorithm, the source of all our efforts, quite by chance. Professor Britton Harris suggested to me in April 1967 that I might like to attend a CEIR half-day seminar on optimal regression being given by Professor M. G. Kendall in Washington. D. C. I agreed that the topic seemed interesting and went along. Had it not been for Harris' suggestion and financial support, this work almost certainly would have never begun."

Although natural language processing has come far, the technology has not achieved a major impact on society. Is this because of some fundamental limitation that cannot be overcome? Or because there has not been enough time to refine and apply theoretical work already done? Editors Madeleine Bates and Ralph Weischedel believe it is neither; they feel that several critical issues have never been adequately addressed in either theoretical or applied work, and they have invited capable researchers in the field to do that in Challenges in Natural Language Processing. This volume will be of interest to researchers of computational linguistics in academic and non-academic settings and to graduate students in computational linguistics, artificial intelligence and linguistics.