1.6.5 The Field Comes Together: 1994–1999

By the last five years of the millennium it was clear that the field was vastly changing. First, probabilistic and data-driven models had become quite standard throughout natural language processing. Algorithms for parsing, part-of-speech tagging, reference resolution, and discourse processing all began to incorporate probabilities, and employee evaluation methodologies borrowed from speech recognition and information retrieval. Second, the increases in the speed and memory of computers had allowed commercial exploitation of a number of subareas of speech and language processing, in particular speech recognition and spelling and grammar checking. Speech and language processing algorithms began to be applied to Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC). Finally, the rise of the Web emphasized the need for language-based information retrieval and information extraction.