Paper description: A brief, general-audience overview of the history of natural language processing, focusing on data-driven approaches. Topics include "Ambiguity and language analysis", "Firth things first", "A 'C' change", and "The empiricists strike back".

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BibTeX entry:

@InCollection{Lee:04a,
  author =  {Lillian Lee},
  title =    {"I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that":  Linguistics, Statistics, and Natural Language Processing circa  2001},
  booktitle = {Computer Science: Reflections on the Field, Reflections from the Field},
  pages = {111--118},
  publisher = {The National Academies Press},
  year = 2004,
  editor = {Committee on the Fundamentals of Computer Science: Challenges and Opportunities, Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, National Research Council}
}