This comprehensive, reader-friendly volume offers readers a high-level orientation, discussing the foundations of the field and presenting both the classical work and the most recent results. It covers an extremely rich array of topics including not only syntax and semantics but also phonology and morphology, probabilistic approaches, complexity, learnability, and the analysis of speech and handwriting.

As the first text of its kind, this innovative book will be a valuable tool and reference for those in information science (information retrieval and extraction, search engines) and in natural language technologies (speech recognition, optical character recognition, HCI). Exercises suitable for advanced readers are included as well as suggestions for further reading and an extensive bibliography.

"I'm pleased and impressed. The book is very readable, often entertaining — it tells what the issues are, what they are called, in what health they are, where more meat can be found. Given the enormous amount of material and concepts touched on, and the technical difficulties lying under the surface almost everywhere, the book betrays scholarship in a matter-of-fact way, making due impression on, but without clobbering, the reader. This is a book that invites READING THROUGH…".

Professor Tommaso Toffoli, Boston University, USA