A Survey and Classification of Controlled Natural Languages
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paper_title: Can Controlled Languages Scale to the Web

paper_content:

In a multilingual Semantic Web, authors might write in precise, expressive varieties of diverse languages. Do such controlled languages exist? Of 41 candidates, just 4 were (1) designed for multiple domains and genres and (2) documented enough for evaluation. A sample of Web statements on health and human rights revealed limited expressivity or precision in each language. The most expressive one avoided structural ambiguity but allowed semantic ambiguity that could frustrate human and machine comprehension. The possibility of a practical Web-scale controlled language remains undemonstrated but unrefuted.
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paper_title: Acquiring and Using World Knowledge using a Restricted Subset of English

paper_content:

Many AI applications require a base of world knowledge to support reasoning. However, construction of such inferencecapable knowledge bases, even if constrained in coverage, remains one of the major challenges of AI. Authoring knowledge in formal logic is too complex a task for many users, while knowledge authored in unconstrained natural language is generally too difficult for computers to understand. However, there is an intermediate position, which we are pursuing, namely authoring knowledge in a restricted subset of natural language. Our claim is that this approach hits a “sweet spot” between the former two extremes, being both usable by humans and understandable by machines. We have developed such a language (called CPL, Computer-Processable Language), an interpreter, and a reasoner, and have used them to encode approximately 1000 “commonsense” rules (a mixture of general and domain-specific). The knowledge base is being used experimentally for semantic retrieval of video clips based on their captions, also expressed in CPL. In this paper, we describe CPL, its interpretation, and its use for reasoning, and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of restricted natural language as a the basis for knowledge representation.
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paper_title: English as a formal specification language

paper_content:

PENG is a computer-processable controlled natural language designed for writing unambiguous and precise specifications. PENG covers a strict subset of standard English and is precisely defined by a controlled grammar and a controlled lexicon. In contrast to other controlled languages, the author does not need to know the grammatical restrictions explicitly. ECOLE, a look-ahead text editor, indicates the restrictions while the specification is written. The controlled lexicon contains domain-specific content words that can be defined by the author on the fly and predefined function words. Specifications written in PENG can be deterministically translated into discourse representations structures to cope with anaphora and presuppositions and also into first-order predicate logic. To test the formal properties of PENG, we reformulated Schubert's steamroller puzzle in PENG, translated the resulting specification via discourse representation structures into first-order predicate logic with equality, and proved the steamroller's conclusion with OTTER, a standard theorem prover.
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paper_title: Can Controlled Languages Scale to the Web

paper_content:

In a multilingual Semantic Web, authors might write in precise, expressive varieties of diverse languages. Do such controlled languages exist? Of 41 candidates, just 4 were (1) designed for multiple domains and genres and (2) documented enough for evaluation. A sample of Web statements on health and human rights revealed limited expressivity or precision in each language. The most expressive one avoided structural ambiguity but allowed semantic ambiguity that could frustrate human and machine comprehension. The possibility of a practical Web-scale controlled language remains undemonstrated but unrefuted.
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paper_title: On the Expressive Power of Programming Languages

paper_content:

The literature on programming languages contains an abundance of informal claims on the relative expressive power of programming languages, but there is no framework for formalizing such statements nor for deriving interesting consequences. As a first step in this direction, we develop a formal notion of expressiveness and investigate its properties. To demonstrate the theory's closeness to published intuitions on expressiveness, we analyze the expressive power of several extensions of functional languages. Based on these results, we believe that our system correctly captures many of the informal ideas on expressiveness, and that it constitutes a good basis for further research in this direction.
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paper_title: Can Controlled Languages Scale to the Web

paper_content:

In a multilingual Semantic Web, authors might write in precise, expressive varieties of diverse languages. Do such controlled languages exist? Of 41 candidates, just 4 were (1) designed for multiple domains and genres and (2) documented enough for evaluation. A sample of Web statements on health and human rights revealed limited expressivity or precision in each language. The most expressive one avoided structural ambiguity but allowed semantic ambiguity that could frustrate human and machine comprehension. The possibility of a practical Web-scale controlled language remains undemonstrated but unrefuted.
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paper_title: Using Bracketed Parses To Evaluate A Grammar Checking Application

paper_content:

We describe a method for evaluating a grammar checking application with hand-bracketed parses. A randomly-selected set of sentences was submitted to a grammar checker in both bracketed and unbracketed formats. A comparison of the resulting error reports illuminates the relationship between the underlying performance of the parser-grammar system and the error critiques presented to the user.
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paper_title: Ergonomics Analysis for Vehicle Assembly Using Artificial Intelligence

paper_content:

In this paper we discuss a deployed application at Ford Motor Company that utilizes AI technology for the analysis of potential ergonomic concerns at our assembly plants. The manufacture of motor vehicles is a complex and dynamic problem and the costs related to workplace injuries and lost productivity due to bad ergonomic design can be very significant. We have developed two separate ergonomic analysis systems that have been integrated into the process planning for manufacturing system at Ford known as the Global Study and Process Allocation System (GSPAS). GSPAS has become the global repository for standardized engineering processes and data for assembling all Ford vehicles, including parts, tools and standard labor time. One of the more significant benefits of GSPAS is the use of a controlled language, known as Standard Language, which is used throughout Ford to write the process assembly instructions. AI is already used within GSPAS for Standard Language validation and direct labor management. The work described here shows how we built upon our previous success with AI to expand the technology into the new domain of ergonomics analysis.
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paper_title: Ontology, Metadata, and Semiotics

paper_content:

The Internet is a giant semiotic system. It is a massive collection of Peirce’s three kinds of signs: icons, which show the form of something; indices, which point to something; and symbols, which represent something according to some convention. But current proposals for ontologies and metadata have overlooked some of the most important features of signs. A sign has three aspects: it is (1) an entity that represents (2) another entity to (3) an agent. By looking only at the signs themselves, some metadata proposals have lost sight of the entities they represent and the agents – human, animal, or robot – which interpret them. With its three branches of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics, semiotics provides guidelines for organizing and using signs to represent something to someone for some purpose. Besides representation, semiotics also supports methods for translating patterns of signs intended for one purpose to other patterns intended for different but related purposes. This article shows how the fundamental semiotic primitives are represented in semantically equivalent notations for logic, including controlled natural languages and various computer languages.
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paper_title: OWL Simplified English: A Finite-State Language for Ontology Editing

paper_content:

We describe a controlled fragment of English for editing ontologies in OWL. Although this language substantially overlaps other CNLs that have been proposed for this purpose, it has a number of special features designed to simplify its learning and use. First, the language allows users to start typing in sentences with little or no preliminary effort in building a controlled vocabulary or lexicon. Second, it disallows sentences that people interpret as structurally ambiguous. Third, it employs a finite-state grammar, so facilitating fast and reliable implementation of an editing tool. These advantages are gained at the cost of severe restrictions in coverage, which mean that the majority of potential OWL axioms cannot be expressed. However, analysis of axiom patterns from several ontology repositories suggests that these constraints are almost invariably respected by ontology developers, so that in practice the loss of expressivity is rarely noticeable.
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paper_title: Atomate it! end-user context-sensitive automation using heterogeneous information sources on the web

paper_content:

The transition of personal information management (PIM) tools off the desktop to the Web presents an opportunity to augment these tools with capabilities provided by the wealth of real-time information readily available. In this paper, we describe a next-generation personal information assistance engine that lets end-users delegate to it various simple context- and activity-reactive tasks and reminders. Our system, Atomate, treats RSS/ATOM feeds from social networking and life-tracking sites as sensor streams, integrating information from such feeds into a simple unified RDF world model representing people, places and things and their timevarying states and activities. Combined with other information sources on the web, including the user's online calendar, web-based e-mail client, news feeds and messaging services, Atomate can be made to automatically carry out a variety of simple tasks for the user, ranging from context-aware filtering and messaging, to sharing and social coordination actions. Atomate's open architecture and world model easily accommodate new information sources and actions via the addition of feeds and web services. To make routine use of the system easy for non-programmers, Atomate provides a constrained-input natural language interface (CNLI) for behavior specification, and a direct-manipulation interface for inspecting and updating its world model.
---
paper_title: Can Controlled Languages Scale to the Web

paper_content:

In a multilingual Semantic Web, authors might write in precise, expressive varieties of diverse languages. Do such controlled languages exist? Of 41 candidates, just 4 were (1) designed for multiple domains and genres and (2) documented enough for evaluation. A sample of Web statements on health and human rights revealed limited expressivity or precision in each language. The most expressive one avoided structural ambiguity but allowed semantic ambiguity that could frustrate human and machine comprehension. The possibility of a practical Web-scale controlled language remains undemonstrated but unrefuted.
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paper_title: Controlled language for knowledge representation

paper_content:

Current expert systems represent knowledge in several different forms. In most cases, there is an object or inheritance hierarchy representing static facts about the objects, actions, or events in the domain of application, and the important relationships between them. Other types of knowledge are represented in the form of rules, usually conditionals saying what action should be performed if such and such a condition is encountered, or what conclusion can be drawn if such and such other conditions obtain. A third type of knowledge is explicit control information, either in the form of a ‘conflict resolution’ strategy, saying how to decide which of several alternatives to pursue, or (increasingly common) in the form of a statistically driven component also deciding among several competing hypotheses on the basis of prior experience. We shall not be concerned with this type of knowledge in the following.
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paper_title: Establishing Implementation Priorities in Aiding Writers of Controlled Crisis Management Texts

paper_content:

As clarity in the Crisis Management domain is crucial, and there exists an enormous amount of Crisis Management documents, a specific language resource (the Controlled Language for Crisis Management, CLCM) for editing Crisis Management instructions in English has been previously developed. Based on a specially designed controlled language evaluation experiment, we have determined that manual simplification, far from being easy, is an extremely time-consuming process and thus automatization is essential in order to facilitate the writing of clear instructions. This article describes this experiment which also aims to determine which operations should be privileged and are more urgent to be implemented in order to address the most critical issues first.
---
paper_title: Atomate it! end-user context-sensitive automation using heterogeneous information sources on the web

paper_content:

The transition of personal information management (PIM) tools off the desktop to the Web presents an opportunity to augment these tools with capabilities provided by the wealth of real-time information readily available. In this paper, we describe a next-generation personal information assistance engine that lets end-users delegate to it various simple context- and activity-reactive tasks and reminders. Our system, Atomate, treats RSS/ATOM feeds from social networking and life-tracking sites as sensor streams, integrating information from such feeds into a simple unified RDF world model representing people, places and things and their timevarying states and activities. Combined with other information sources on the web, including the user's online calendar, web-based e-mail client, news feeds and messaging services, Atomate can be made to automatically carry out a variety of simple tasks for the user, ranging from context-aware filtering and messaging, to sharing and social coordination actions. Atomate's open architecture and world model easily accommodate new information sources and actions via the addition of feeds and web services. To make routine use of the system easy for non-programmers, Atomate provides a constrained-input natural language interface (CNLI) for behavior specification, and a direct-manipulation interface for inspecting and updating its world model.
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paper_title: Coral: Corpus Access in Controlled Language

paper_content:

In this paper, we present Coral, an interface in which complex corpus queries can be expressed in a controlled subset of natural English. With the help of a predictive editor, users can compose queries and submit them to the Coral system, which then automatically translates them into formal AQL statements. We give an overview of the controlled natural language developed for Coral and describe the functionalities of the predictive editor provided for it. We also report on a user experiment in which the system was evaluated. The results show that, with Coral, corpora of annotated texts can be queried more easily and more quickly than with the existing ANNIS interface. Our system demonstrates that complex corpora can be accessed without the need to learn a complicated, formal query language.
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paper_title: Controlled English for Knowledge-Based MT: Experience with the KANT System

paper_content:

In this paper, we describe the design and deployment of KANT Controlled English (KCE) for knowledge-based machine translation in the KANT system. KCE combines three kinds of constraints: constraints on the lexicon; constraints on the complexity of sentences; and the use of generalized markup language. We describe how each of these types of language control are utilized in the implementation of a typical KANT application. The principles described are not specific to knowledge-based MT, and can be applied in the design of controlled languages for any kind of MT application.
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paper_title: EasyEnglish: A Tool For Improving Document Quality

paper_content:

We describe the authoring tool, EasyEnglish, which is part of IBM's internal SGML editing environment, Information Development Workbench. EasyEnglish helps writers produce clearer and simpler English by pointing out ambiguity and complexity as well as performing some standard grammar checking. Where appropriate, EasyEnglish makes suggestions for rephrasings that may be substituted directly into the text by using the editor interface.EasyEnglish is based on a full parse by English Slot Grammar; this makes it possible to produce a higher degree of accuracy in error messages as well as handle a large variety of texts.
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paper_title: PILLS: Multilingual generation of medical information documents with overlapping content

paper_content:

In the pharmaceutical industry, products have to be described by a range of document types with overlapping content. Moreover, much of this documentation has to be produced in many languages. This situation is commonplace in many commercial domains, and leads to well-known problems in maintaining a set of related documents and their translations. We describe a potential solution explored in the PILLS project. All relevant knowledge about a product is entered only once, through a natural-language interface to a knowledge base. From this ‘master model’, specialised models for a range of document types are derived automatically; from each specialised model, documents are generated automatically in all supported languages. As an illustration of this approach, the PILLS demonstrator generates three medical document types in English, German and French.
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paper_title: English as a formal specification language

paper_content:

PENG is a computer-processable controlled natural language designed for writing unambiguous and precise specifications. PENG covers a strict subset of standard English and is precisely defined by a controlled grammar and a controlled lexicon. In contrast to other controlled languages, the author does not need to know the grammatical restrictions explicitly. ECOLE, a look-ahead text editor, indicates the restrictions while the specification is written. The controlled lexicon contains domain-specific content words that can be defined by the author on the fly and predefined function words. Specifications written in PENG can be deterministically translated into discourse representations structures to cope with anaphora and presuppositions and also into first-order predicate logic. To test the formal properties of PENG, we reformulated Schubert's steamroller puzzle in PENG, translated the resulting specification via discourse representation structures into first-order predicate logic with equality, and proved the steamroller's conclusion with OTTER, a standard theorem prover.
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Title: A Survey and Classification of Controlled Natural Languages

Section 1: Introduction
Description 1: Provide an overview of controlled natural languages (CNLs), highlighting their diversity and the lack of a common definition. Discuss the goals of the survey and the structure of the paper.

Section 2: Background
Description 2: Clarify the definition of controlled natural languages and how they differ from related terms. Provide a review of previous classification attempts.

Section 3: Definition
Description 3: Present and discuss the proposed definitions of controlled natural language.

Section 4: Related Terms
Description 4: Discuss terms that are related to CNLs, such as sublanguage, fragments of language, style guide, phraseology, controlled vocabulary, and constructed language.

Section 5: Types and Properties
Description 5: Explore the various types of CNLs and their properties. Introduce the different goals and environments where CNLs are used.

Section 6: PENS Classification Scheme
Description 6: Introduce the PENS classification scheme, which includes the dimensions of Precision, Expressiveness, Naturalness, and Simplicity. Define and discuss each dimension.

Section 7: Languages
Description 7: Provide an overview of various English-based controlled languages, highlighting twelve important and influential languages. Discuss their classification according to the PENS scheme.

Section 8: Analysis
Description 8: Analyze the collected data, including the PENS classes and properties of the surveyed CNLs. Visualize the languages in the conceptual PENS space and discuss observed patterns and correlations.

Section 9: Design Decisions
Description 9: Discuss how the collected data can be used to guide the design decisions for new CNLs, considering different application environments and problem domains.

Section 10: Timeline
Description 10: Present a timeline of the evolution of controlled English languages, identifying influential languages and three eras of development: general, technical, and logical.

Section 11: Evaluations
Description 11: Review studies that evaluate the effectiveness of CNLs in achieving their goals, discussing significant findings and insights from different types of evaluations.

Section 12: Conclusions
Description 12: Summarize the main findings of the survey, revisit the goals set out in the introduction, and discuss the implications for further research and development in the field of CNLs.

Section 13: Appendix A: Full List of English-based Controlled Natural Languages
Description 13: Provide a comprehensive list of 100 English-based controlled natural languages, including brief descriptions and relevant information for each.