What is NLP in simple terms?

NLP is the field of building computer systems that classify, search, transform or generate written and spoken human language.

What is a token in NLP?

A token is a unit processed by a model, such as a word, subword, character or punctuation mark. Tokenization rules depend on the model.

What is an embedding?

An embedding is a dense numerical vector used to represent a token, sentence or document so a model can learn or compare useful relationships.

What are the main NLP tasks?

Common tasks include classification, entity recognition, semantic search, question answering, summarization, translation and text generation.

Is NLP the same as a large language model?

No. Large language models are one family of models used in NLP. NLP also includes rules, statistical methods, search, smaller neural models and structured pipelines.

What is the difference between training and inference?

Training updates model parameters from data. Inference applies a trained model to new input without changing its parameters.

How should a beginner evaluate an NLP model?

Start with task-specific metrics and inspect errors by class, language and operating condition. Add human review and downstream outcome measures where decisions matter.

Natural Language Processing

NLP Basics: Text, Tokens, Embeddings and Core Tasks

Natural language processing, or NLP, is the field of building computer systems that work with written or spoken human language. An NLP system may classify a document, find names, retrieve a passage, translate a sentence or generate text. These capabilities

Ruskin Felix Barar19 December 2025Updated 6 October 202612 min read

NLP Basics: Text, Tokens, Embeddings and Core Tasks

Natural language processing, or NLP, is the field of building computer systems that work with written or spoken human language. An NLP system may classify