Corpora: Language Engineering

[Geoffrey Sampson]

I haven't been following this series of messages as carefully as I might,
but unless I have missed an earlier mention it might be worth pointing out
that the most recent issue of the journal _Natural Language Engineering_
includes an article (by someone at the University of Sheffield, I think)
on exactly this question -- the history and usage of the term "language
engineering".  In response to Tim Buckwalter in particular, I think
of "language engineering" and "computational linguistics" as reasonably
clearly distinct:  in the usage that seems to be current among people
I interact with, "computational linguistics" is a pure academic subject
involving computer models of natural languages aiming at discovering more
about the nature of language and the nature of human cognitive abilities,
while "language engineering" is concerned with computing developments whose
principal motive is to contribute to practical, industrially or socially
valuable natural-language-processing systems (even if the work done now
is sometimes only remotely or indirectly linked to the realization of
such systems in the future).

It is also worth commenting that there seems to be a European/American
difference in usage.  "Language Engineering" was used officially as a label
for a major sector of European Union research funding under the recently
concluded Framework IV research programme, so that Europeans naturally
found themselves using this term -- in some contexts they _had_ to use it --
and it commonly occurred as an acronym, LE.  Under the new Framework V
programme, the relevant EU Directorate-General has instead adopted what I
think of as the American phrase "Human Language Technology".  It will be
interesting to see whether this leads to the term LE fading out of usage.
I hope not:  I find it a very convenient and attractive concept, and
Human Language Technology is to my mind an ugly replacement.


Prof. Geoffrey Sampson

School of Cognitive & Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Falmer, Brighton BN1 9QH, GB

e-mail geoffs at cogs.susx.ac.uk
tel. +44 1273 678525
fax  +44 1273 671320
Web site http://www.grs.u-net.com