Gate { a Tipster-based General Architecture for Text Engineering

Building on the work of the TIPSTER architecture group, the University of Sheeeld Natural Language Processing group have developed GATE, a General Architecture for Text Engineering. GATE implements the TIPSTER document manager, and adds a rich set of graphical tools for the management of modules and the data they produce and consume, and the visualisation of data. This paper classiies and reviews current approaches to software infrastructure for research, development and delivery of NLP systems. The task is motivated by a discussion of current trends in the eld of NLP and Language Engineering. The rest of the paper describes GATE and concludes with a status report on the system.