Natural Language Processing as a Foundation of the Semantic Web

Natural Language Processing as a Foundation of the Semantic Web argues that NaturalLanguage Processing (NLP) does, and will continue to, underlie the Semantic Web (SW),including its initial construction from unstructured sources like the World Wide Web, in severaldifferent ways, and whether its advocates realise this or not. Chiefly, it argues, such NLPactivity is the only way up to a defensible notion of meaning at conceptual levels based onlower level empirical computations over usage. The claim being made is definitely not logicbad,NLP-good in any simple-minded way, but that the SW will be a fascinating interaction ofthese two methodologies, like the WWW (which, as the authors explain, has been a fruitful fieldfor statistical NLP research) but with deeper content. Only NLP technologies (and chieflyinformation extraction) will be able to provide the requisite resource description framework(RDF) knowledge stores for the SW from existing WWW (unstructured) text databases, and inthe vast quantities needed. There is no alternative at this point, since a wholly or mostly handcrafted SW is also unthinkable, as is a SW built from scratch and without reference to theWWW. It is also assumed here that, whatever the limitations on current SW representationalpower drawn attention to here, the SW will continue to grow in a distributed manner so as toserve the needs of scientists, even if it is not perfect. The WWW has already shown how animperfect artefact can become indispensable.Natural Language Processing as a Foundation of the Semantic Web will appeal toresearchers, practitioners and anyone with an interest in NLP, the philosophy of language,cognitive science, the Semantic Web and Web Science generally, as well as providing amagisterial and controversial overview of the history of artificial intelligence.