Linguistic programming

[tedster]

Right now most search engines are primarily looking to be fiscally viable. Once that stabilizes (if that stabilizes?) with all the various pay-for schemes shaking out, I'm feeling that improved linguistic programming will take things to the next level for web search.

A search engine that can tell the difference between "running an apparel business" and "a running apparel business" has a leg up.

So, I'd like to learn more about the uses of linguistics with search engines. Does anyone have any resources to recommend?

[ggrot]

I think that is kinda what ask jeeves originally tried to come across as, something that could handle syntax of queries, but it was never very powerful in that respect.

[tedster]

Right on about AskJeeves -- their seams are showing and the process should be more invisible, rather than always needing a customer response.

I also think that some of the more obtuse results from AltaVista a year ago had something to do with their attempts at including linguistics.

[tilt]

Google lists some heavyweight research professors on its technical advisory board. One of them is Stanford prof Jeff Ullman whose specialty is database design. No surprise there. Another is Terry Winograd, also a prof of computer science at Stanford. Winograd is one of the pioneers of the AI movement in computer science. His phD thesis from MIT in 1970 was on natural language processing, and he's written or edited a number of books on the subject. These days, Winograd does research on conceptual models of human-computer interaction. That's really just a fancy way of talking about natural language processing, or linguistic programming.

[ggrot]

Human Computer Interaction (HCI) is actually a much broader subject than linguistic programming or natural language processing, but I would agree that is probably what he woudl be doing for google.