From the course: Natural Language Processing for Speech and Text: From Beginner to Advanced

What are sequences? - Python Tutorial

From the course: Natural Language Processing for Speech and Text: From Beginner to Advanced

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What are sequences?

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- Throughout this course, I will frequently mention text and speech data, both of which are types of sequence data. So, it will benefit us to first know what sequences are. Sequences are ordered arrangements of smaller elements that that's combine to form a larger unit with meaning. The keyword is ordered. For example, natural language processing, versus processing language natural, or phone my house, verses my house phone. Even though they contain the same elements, convey different meanings and context. Sequences share characteristics. That is, they all contain representation of language and the ability to convey information, ideas, and emotions. They also have structure and follow linguistic roles. So, let's take a look at one type of sequence. Text. Text is guided by grammar, syntax, and vocabulary. Its elements can include characters, such as letters and punctuations. For example, N-A-T-U-R-A-L. Words, which are a combination of characters, as seen in natural, and sentences, as in natural language processing, is used for machine translation. Group of words, like phrases and clauses are also text sequences. Speeches are other type of sequence, that is the audible spoken word. Speech is guided by phonetics, phonology, and prosody. Its elements include phonemes, which are the smallest unit of sound in a language, syllables, which are a combination of spoken language, and then words, which are a combination of sounds that carry meaning within a language. Natural language processing techniques are designed to work with sequences. They rely on the patterns and rules followed by text and speech. They analyze data one element at a time, and consider the position and relationship of each element with its neighbor. For example, if you're using video captions while watching this course, that's speech to text in NLP in action. We will explore many other uses later on in the course. You begin to notice the sequences you use every day and it to help you engage with NLP techniques and the tools that rely on them.

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