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'Controlled natural languages' (CNLs) are subsets of natural languages, 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 "write short and grammatically simple sentences",
"use nouns instead of pronouns", "use determiners", and "use active instead of passive".
^[1]
The second type of languages have a formal logical basis, i.e. they have a formal syntax
and 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.

Contents

Languages

See also

References

External links

Languages

Examples of existing controlled natural languages include:

★ Attempto Controlled English

★ Common Logic Controlled English (CLCE)

★ E-Prime

★ Gellish

★ Metalog's Pseudo Natural Language (PNL)

★ Ordnance Survey Rabbit

★ Processable ENGlish (PENG)

★ Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Rules

★ Uwe Muegge's Controlled Language Optimized for Uniform Translation (CLOUT)

See also

★ Constructed language

★ Knowledge representation

★ Natural language processing

References

1. Controlled language: the next big thing in translation?, , Uwe, Muegge, ClientSide News Magazine,

External links

★ Controlled Natural Languages (Macquarie University)

★ ASD Simplified Technical English (AeroSpace and Defence Industries Association of Europe--formerly AECMA)

★ Simplus - Simplified English Checker

★ acrocheck - Customizable controlled language checker for many authoring environments