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Controlled natural language

{{short description|Subset of a natural language}}

Controlled natural languages (CNLs) are subsets of natural languages that are obtained by restricting the grammar and vocabulary in order to reduce or eliminate ambiguity and complexity. Traditionally, controlled languages fall into two major types: those that improve readability for human readers (e.g. non-native speakers),

and those that enable reliable automatic semantic analysis of the language.{{Cite web |title=A Survey and Classification of Controlled Natural Languages |url=https://direct.mit.edu/coli/article/40/1/121/1455/A-Survey-and-Classification-of-Controlled-Natural |access-date=2024-03-27 |website=direct.mit.edu}}{{Cite web |title=Controlled Natural Languages for language generation in artificial cognition |url=https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6907843 |access-date=2024-03-27 |website=IEEE}}

The first type of languages (often called "simplified" or "technical" languages), for example ASD Simplified Technical English, Caterpillar Technical English, IBM's Easy English, are used in the industry to increase the quality of technical documentation, and possibly simplify the semi-automatic translation of the documentation. These languages restrict the writer by general rules such as "Keep sentences short", "Avoid the use of pronouns", "Only use dictionary-approved words", and "Use only the active voice".{{cite conference |url=http://www.mt-archive.info/CLT-2003-Obrien.pdf |title=Controlling Controlled English – An Analysis of Several Controlled Language Rule Sets |first=Sharon |last=O'Brien |year=2003 |book-title=Proceedings of EAMT-CLAW |access-date=2011-12-30 |archive-date=2016-03-03 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303181833/http://www.mt-archive.info/CLT-2003-Obrien.pdf |url-status=dead }}

The second type of languages have a formal syntax and formal semantics, and can be mapped to an existing formal language, such as first-order logic. Thus, those languages can be used as knowledge representation languages,Schwitter, Rolf. "[http://staff.um.edu.mt/mros1/cnl2010/TALKS/schwitter_tutorial.pdf Controlled natural languages for knowledge representation]." Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Computational Linguistics: Posters. Association for Computational Linguistics, 2010. and writing of those languages is supported by fully automatic consistency and redundancy checks, query answering, etc.

Languages

Existing controlled natural languages include:{{Cite journal|doi = 10.1162/COLI_a_00168|title = A Survey and Classification of Controlled Natural Languages|year = 2014|last1 = Kuhn|first1 = Tobias|journal = Computational Linguistics|volume = 40|pages = 121–170|s2cid = 14586568|doi-access = free|arxiv = 1507.01701}}{{cite journal | first = Jonathan | last = Pool | url = http://utilika.org/pubs/etc/ambigcl/clweb.html | title = Can Controlled Languages Scale to the Web? | year = 2006 | url-status = dead | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20090815035716/http://utilika.org/pubs/etc/ambigcl/clweb.html | archive-date = 2009-08-15 }}

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  • ASD Simplified Technical English
  • Attempto Controlled English{{cite conference |author1=Norbert E. Fuchs |author2=Kaarel Kaljurand |author3=Gerold Schneider | title = Attempto Controlled English Meets the Challenges of Knowledge Representation, Reasoning, Interoperability and User Interfaces | book-title = FLAIRS 2006 | date = 2006 | url = http://attempto.ifi.uzh.ch/site/publications/papers/FLAIRS0601FuchsN.pdf }}
  • Aviation English
  • Basic English{{cite book|last1=Ogden|first1=Charles Kay|title=Basic English: A General Introduction with Rules and Grammar|date=1930|publisher=Paul Treber & Co., Ltd.|location=London}}
  • ClearTalk
  • Common Logic Controlled English{{cite web|url=http://www.jfsowa.com/clce/specs.htm|title=Common Logic Controlled English|website=www.jfsowa.com|access-date=27 August 2017}}
  • Distributed Language Translation Esperanto
  • Easy Japanese
  • E-Prime
  • Français fondamental
  • Gellish Formal English
  • Interlingua-IL sive Latino sine flexione (Giuseppe Peano)
  • Logical EnglishKowalski, R., Dávila, J., Sartor, G. and Calejo, M., 2023. Logical English for law and education. In Prolog: The Next 50 Years (pp. 287-299). Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland.
  • ModeLang{{cite journal|last1=Wasik|first1=Szymon|last2=Prejzendanc|first2=Tomasz|last3=Blazewicz|first3=Jacek|title=ModeLang: A New Approach for Experts-Friendly Viral Infections Modeling|journal=Computational and Mathematical Methods in Medicine|date=2013|volume=2013|page=320715|doi=10.1155/2013/320715|pmid=24454531|pmc=3878415|doi-access=free }}
  • Newspeak (fictional)
  • Processable English (PENG){{cite journal|last1=Schwitter|first1=Rolf|last2=Tilbrook|first2=M|title=PENG: Processable ENGlish|journal=Technical Report, Macquarie University, Australia|date=2004}}
  • Seaspeak
  • Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Business Rules
  • Special English

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Encoding

IETF has reserved {{code|simple}} as a BCP 47 variant subtag for simplified versions of languages.{{cite web |last1=Everson |first1=Michael |author1-link=Michael Everson |title=Registration form for 'simple' |url=https://www.iana.org/assignments/lang-subtags-templates/simple.txt |publisher=IANA |access-date=22 April 2021 |language=en}}

See also

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References

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External links

  • [https://sites.google.com/site/controllednaturallanguage/ Controlled Natural Languages] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210308080234/https://sites.google.com/site/controllednaturallanguage/ |date=2021-03-08 }}

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Category:Natural language processing