Corpora: Natural Language Toolkit, Version 0.7

[Edward Loper]

Version 0.7 of the Natural Language Toolkit is now available for
download.  The Natural Language Toolkit is a Python package that
simplifies the construction of programs that process natural language.
In particular:

  - It provides basic tools for manipulating data and performing tasks
    related to NLP.
  - It defines standard interfaces between the different components of
    an NLP system.
  - It provides an infrastructure for building new NLP systems.

The toolkit's primary aim is to serve as a pedagogical tool; but it is
also useful as a framework for implementing research-related programs.
NLTK runs on most platforms, including Windows, OS X, Linux, and UNIX.
For more information, or to download a copy, please visit our web page:

    http://nltk.sf.net
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Toolkit Contents

  - [Python Modules] implement the basic data types, tools, and
    interfaces that make up the toolkit.

  - [Tutorials] teach students how to use the toolkit, in the context
    of performing specific tasks.

  - [Exercises and Problem Sets] help students learn more about
    various aspects of natural language processing.

  - [Reference Documentation] provides precise definitions of the
    behavior of each module, interface, class, method, function, and
    variable defined by the toolkit.

  - [Technical Documentation] explains and justifies the toolkit's
    design and implementation.
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Contributing

NLTK is an open source project, and we welcome any contributions.  We
deliberately structured NLTK to facilitate parallel development.  If
you are interested in contributing to NLTK, or have any ideas for
improvements, please talk to us, or send us email at
edloper at gradient.cis.upenn.edu and sb at unagi.cis.upenn.edu.
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NLTK 0.7 includes the following modules:

  Basics
      [token] Basic classes for encoding and processing individual
          elements of text, such as words or sentences.
      [tree] Classes for representing hierarchical structures over
          text, such as syntax trees.
      [probability] Classes that encode frequency distributions and
          probability distributions.

  Tagging
      [tagger] A standard interface to tag each token of a text with
          supplementary information, such as its part of speech; and
          several implementations of that interface.

  Parsing
      [cfg] Basic data types for encoding context free grammars.
      [parser] A standard interface to produce trees representing the
          structure of texts; and two simple implementations of that
          interface.
      [parser.chart] A flexible parser implementation that uses a
          chart to record hypotheses about syntactic constituents.
      [parser.chunk] A standard interface for robust parsers used to
          identify non-overlapping linguistic groups (such as base
          noun phrases) in unrestricted text; and a regular-expression
          based implementation of that interface.
      [parser.probabilistic] A standard interface for probabilistic
          parsers; and two implementations of that interface.

  Text Classification
      [classifier] A standard interface for classifying texts into
          categories.
      [classifier.feature] A standard way of encoding the information
          used to make classification decisions.
      [classifier.naivebayes] A text classifier implementation based
          on the Naive Bayes assumption.
      [classifier.maxent] An implementation of the maximum entropy
          model for text classification; and implementations of the
          GIS and IIS algorithms for training the classifier.
      [classifier.featureselection] A standard interface for choosing
          which features are relevant for a given classification
          decision.

  Finite State Automata
      [fsa] Classes for representing finite state automata and regular
          expressions.

  Visualization and Interactive Tools
      [draw] A Tk-based framework for building graphical tools.
      [draw.tree] A graphical representation for hierarchical
          structures.
      [draw.fsa] A graphical representation for finite state automata.
      [draw.plot] A tool for graphing arbitrary functions.
      [draw.chart] An interactive graphical tool for experimenting
          with the chart parser.
      [draw.rdparser] An interactive graphical tool for exploring the
          recursive descent parser.
      [draw.srparser] An interactive graphical tool for learning about
          the shift/reduce parser.