Book excerpt: This volume provides a selection of the papers which were presented at the ninth conference on Computational Linguistics in the Netherlands (Leuven, 1998). It gives an accurate and up-to-date picture of the lively scene of computational linguistics in the Netherlands and Flanders. In terms of topics the contributions can be grouped under three headings: the use of statistical methods in speech and language processing (6 papers), the analysis of syntactic and semantic phenomena in the framework of computationally oriented formalisms, such as Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (5 papers), and the development of NLP applications, such as document processing, dialogue modelling and teaching (3 papers). The volume covers the whole range from theoretical to applied research and development, and is hence of interest to both academia and industry. The target audience consists of advanced students and scholars of computational linguistics, and speech and language processing (Linguistics, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering).