A natural languge understanding system must have knowledge about what the words mean, how words combine to form sentences, how word meanings combine to from sentence meanings and so on. The different forms of knowledge required for natural language understanding are given below.
PHONETIC AND PHONOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE
Phonetics is the study of language at the level of sounds while phonology is the study of combination of sounds into organized units of speech, the formation of syllables and larger units. Phonetic and phonological knowledge are essential for speech based systems as they deal with how words are related to the sounds that realize them.
MORPHOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE
Morphology concerns word formation. It is a study of the patterns of formation of words by the combination of sounds into minimal distinctive units of meaning called morphemes. Morphological knowledge concerns how words are constructed from morphemes.
SYNTACTIC KNOWLEDGE
Syntax is the level at which we study how words combine to form phrases, phrases combine to form clauses and clauses join to make sentences. Syntactic analysis concerns sentence formation. It deals with how words can be put together to form correct sentences. It also determines what structural role each word plays in the sentence and what phrases are subparts of what other phrases.
SEMANTIC KNOWLEDGE
It concerns meanings of the words and sentences. This is the study of context independent meaning that is the meaning a sentence has, no matter in which context it is used. Defining the meaning of a sentence is very difficult due to the ambiguities involved.
PRAGMATIC KNOWLEDGE
Pragmatics is the extension of the meaning or semantics. Pragmatics deals with the contextual aspects of meaning in particular situations. It concerns how sentences are used in different situations and how use affects the interpretation of the sentence.
DISCOURSE KNOWLEDGE
Discourse concerns connected sentences. It is a study of chunks of language which are bigger than a single sentence. Dicourse language concerns inter-sentential links that is how the immediately preceding sentences affect the interpretation of the next sentence. Discourse knowledge is important for interpreting pronouns and temporal aspects of the information conveyed.
WORLD KNOWLEDGE
Word knowledge is nothing but everyday knowledge that all speakers share about the world. It includes the general knowledge about the structure of the world and what each language user must know about the other user’s beliefs and goals. This essential to make the language understanding much better.