Recent advancements in human language technology in Italy

This paper presents significant advancements in Human Language Technology fostered by Italian researchers in the last years. We report recent results in the following research directions: Distributional Semantics (i.e. the COMPOSES project), Multilingual Word Sense Disambiguation (the MultiJEDI project), Textual Semantic Inferences (the EXCITEMENT project), and Computer Assisted Translation (the MATECAT project). Key aspects that are common to such research initiatives include the fact that they are funded by the European Commission, under different grants, after having passed a very selective international competition; that they are led by Italian researchers, this way showing both the prominent role and the maturity of the Italian community on the international scene; and that they are currently running, indicating that the research topics of the projects are in the mainstream of Computational Linguistics