Natural Language Processing · TEE · papers
Q1A · NLU and NLG
Solved final paper · December 2025
Actual final examination · 2 December 2025 · 100 marks · 3 hours
Answer
Natural Language Understanding (NLU) interprets language to identify its meaning, intent and relevant information. Natural Language Generation (NLG) produces language that expresses information in a useful form.
| Basis | NLU | NLG |
|---|---|---|
| Direction | Language → meaning or structured information | Meaning or structured information → language |
| Typical input | A user utterance, document or sentence | Facts, a database record, a prompt or a representation |
| Typical output | Intent, entities, sentiment or a semantic representation | A sentence, explanation, summary or dialogue response |
| Main difficulty | Resolving ambiguity and context | Choosing accurate content and producing coherent, fluent wording |
Example: a weather assistant
User: “Will it rain in Mumbai tomorrow?” NLU recognises a weather-query intent, the location Mumbai and the date tomorrow. After a weather service supplies the forecast, NLG produces “Rain is likely in Mumbai tomorrow; carry an umbrella.”
The two functions often work together in a chatbot. Understanding the request and wording the reply are separate tasks; fluent generation alone does not prove correct understanding.
Yaad rakho: NLU mein meaning nikalo; NLG mein meaning ko sentence banao.