In this article, we will explore the fascinating history of Controlled natural language and its impact on today's society. From its humble beginnings to its relevance today, Controlled natural language has played a crucial role in various aspects of everyday life. Over time, Controlled natural language has been the subject of intense debate and has inspired countless research, demonstrating its importance in fields as diverse as science, culture, politics, and many others. Through detailed analysis, we will examine how Controlled natural language has evolved over the years and how it continues to shape the world around us.
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.
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".
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, and writing of those languages is supported by fully automatic consistency and redundancy checks, query answering, etc.
Existing controlled natural languages include:
IETF has reserved simple
as a BCP 47 variant subtag for simplified versions of languages.
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