Getting started on natural language processing with Python

The term Natural Language Processing encompasses a broad set of techniques for automated generation, manipulation and analysis of natural or human languages. Although most NLP techniques inherit largely from Linguistics and Artificial Intelligence, they are also influenced by relatively newer areas such as Machine Learning, Computational Statistics and Cognitive Science. Before we see some examples of NLP techniques, it will be useful to introduce some very basic terminology. Please note that as a side effect of keeping things simple, these definitions may not stand up to strict linguistic scrutiny.