Beginner · NLP

Lexical Analysis

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TL;DR. The initial stage of text processing where a stream of characters is converted into a sequence of tokens (words or meaningful units).

Technical Definition

The initial stage of text processing where a stream of characters is converted into a sequence of tokens (words or meaningful units).

How it works

Lexical analysis, also known as tokenization, involves breaking down text into its smallest meaningful components, called lexemes or tokens. These tokens are then categorized, for instance, as words, punctuation, or numbers. This step is fundamental to almost all natural language processing tasks, providing a structured input for further analysis.

Related Concepts

• Tokenization — The process of breaking text into smaller units (tokens) that language models can process as numerical inputs.