Source : WordNet®

natural language processing
     n : the branch of information science that deals with natural
         language information [syn: {NLP}, {human language
         technology}]

Source : Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing

natural language processing
     
         (NLP) Computer understanding,
        analysis, manipulation, and/or generation of {natural
        language}.
     
        This can refer to anything from fairly simple
        string-manipulation tasks like {stemming}, or building
        concordances of natural language texts, to higher-level
        {AI}-like tasks like processing user {queries} in {natural
        language}.
     
        (1997-09-12)