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Synopsis This is an introductory book on natural language processing, also known as computational linguistics and language engineering. This is a highly multi-disciplinary field, borrowing as it does, from such varied disciplines as linguistics, psychology, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, computer science, mathematics, statistics, physics and engineering. This book is aimed at beginners in any of the related subjects. The book is written in simple, easy-reading, almost conversational style. No background is assumed. It is hoped that this book will be useful for all those interested in human language computing. The book covers foundations of natural language processing as also applications such as information retrieval, information extraction, text categorization, automatic summarization and machine translation. Linguistic as well as statistical view points are included. Examples and illustrations are drawn from Indian languages. Current state and future directions are indicated. There is enough material in the book to be used as a text book for a first course on the topic within library and information sciences, linguistics, computer science, artificial intelligence and other related disciplines. Parts of the book should also be useful for more advanced courses.