Generic Text Processing: a Progress Report

A generic natural language system, without modification, can effectively analyze an arbitrary input at least to the level of word sense tagging. Considerable research has addressed the transportability of natural language systems, but not generic text processing capabilities. For example, previous DARPA-sponsored work [1, 2] produced transportable interfaces to database systems. Each new application of these interfaces generally required modifications to lexicons, new semantic knowledge bases, and other specialized features. The most that natural language text processing systems have accomplished has been the parsing of arbitrary text, without any real semantic analysis.